


Second Chances

by LackingBinary



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Past Abuse, Pining, Slow Burn, Sticky Sexual Interfacing, continuity is pretty canon up til like combiner wars, past megatron/starscream - Freeform, the Slowest Possible burn except for some reason it Starts with a sex scene, then i put canon in a bag and jiggle it a bit, things generally go Up from here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 05:13:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9864386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LackingBinary/pseuds/LackingBinary
Summary: Bumblebee is a ghost. Starscream is in denial. Wheeljack's kinda lost, but he's trying to be a good sport about it.Somehow, everything works out.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> this was alternately 'love is what happens when you make other plans' but second chances was catchier
> 
> for the sake of this fic, bumblebee is a ghost that only starscream can see & not a hallucination. starscream will realize this at some point, but that point is not right now.

The edge of Starscream’s berth presses against the back of his legs, his pedes not quite touching the floor. It’s dark, since he’s either turned the lights off or forgotten to turn them on in the first place--he can’t quite recall which. 

Starscream’s hand is wrapped loosely around his spike, though he doesn’t remember putting it there, or opening his panels. In his other hand, grasped rather more firmly, is a nearly-empty bottle of engex. He doesn’t remember where that came from, either, since it doesn’t look like something from his personal supply, but at least it explains the hazy state of his processor. 

Drunk or not, he thinks wryly, his mind hasn’t exactly been reliable lately. As if on cue, he catches sight of Bumblebee out of the corner of his optic. His delusion looks almost...guilty? And, when it catches Starscream’s gaze, it seems to startle, shrinking in on itself a bit. 

Starscream sketches a jaunty half-wave with the hand holding the engex, inadvertently sloshing most of its remaining contents across his thighs. He glares at the offending bottle for a moment before setting it down, pointedly ignoring the soft chuckle from somewhere behind him. Hadn’t he been doing something else?

Right. Jerking off. He should get back to that. 

It would be easier if he hadn’t suddenly become aware of Bumblebee watching him. Not that it’s actually Bumblebee, and not that this hasn’t happened dozens of times before, but that knowledge doesn’t stop his plating from prickling uncomfortably under the gaze that he can feel resting on him.

t’s been longer than he cares to remember since anyone’s watched him get himself off. Unless you counted the time Rattrap had walked in on him, which had been equal parts awkward and hilarious; it’d been months before the mech would look him in the eye again. Before that, though? It’d been millennia since Megatron’d had the _time_ for frivolities like foreplay, even before things went…sideways. There had been a war to run, after all, and there wasn’t a pair of mechs alive who wouldn’t have fractured under the strain of that. 

He gives his spike a lazy stroke. Megatron. That’s easy enough, isn’t it? Surely, fragging someone for millions of years gave you the right to fantasize about them. 

His fogged processor, however, doesn’t seem to be in a particularly cooperative mood. Instead of conjuring memories of the good old days (there _had_ been good old days, hadn’t there?), all he gets is a catalog of injuries. He’s granted to front-row seating in a rendition of all the times his component parts have been variously crushed, dented, or rent in two. 

Sometimes, he can still feel the scars lingering beneath his plating like persistent ghosts, even though he’s had several full-frame reformats since they’d been inflicted. 

And none of this, of course, is doing anything for his waning arousal. In point of fact, a faint tremor seems to have taken up residence in the struts of his arm. He ex-vents heavily, grinding his dentae in frustration. It’s shaping up to be one of _those_ nights, then; the kind where engex doesn’t so much take off the edge as smother him under the weight of things he’d do better to forget. 

He falls back against the crumpled sheets of his berth, a wave of fatigue washing over him. A hand strokes absent across his chest plating, mostly just for something to do. His optics half-shutter, seemingly of their own accord, and he feels recharge tugging at him. 

“What, giving up already?” A voice says, and Starscream jumps, clenched fingers drawing a thin line of sparks where they drag across his armor. Bumblebee. He’d almost forgotten. 

“Interested, hm?” He mumbles, engex and fatigue softening his words so much that they border on unintelligibility. 

“No,” the voice says, and Starscream can almost hear the frown in it. “But you’re usually more...persistent.”

“I suppose you’d know.” He means to sound bitter, or maybe salacious, but he thinks he probably just sounds tired. 

“When are you going to get it through that thick processor of yours that I’m not a hallucination?”

“Oh, _forgive_ me. I suppose it’s much more likely that you're a ghost, and you've chosen to haunt _me_ , of all people.” He chuckles softly. “Think what you want, but I’m not that self-centered.”

Bumblebee makes an irritated sound, and when the delusion speaks again its voice is closer. “I didn't _choose_ this. You honestly think, if I had my pick, I'd spend eternity stuck with someone who was my enemy for millions of years, and an annoyance besides? You’re more self-absorbed than you think.”

Starscream puts a pillow over his face. It won’t help to block out the little autobot, and they both know it. But the pettiness will be an annoyance, and that makes Starscream feel better. 

“You’re an aft.”

“Guilty as charged,” Starscream slurs through the pillow. 

“Primus, you’re insufferable.”

“‘S rich, coming from myself.”

“I’m not-- Y’know what? I’m done with this conversation. I’m getting a headache, and I don’t even properly have a _head_ any more. Go to sleep, Starscream.”

Even drunk off his aft, Starscream is hardly going to let a hallucination tell him what to do. Frag, he’d barely let _Megatron_ do that. Uncovering his helm and onlining his optics, he props himself up against the headboard of his berth. His hands drift back to his array, so slowly that the motion might be mistaken for an unintentional one. 

“Now you’re just being contrary for the sake of it.”

“Aren’t I always?” He says, a finger slipping down to trace around the rim of his valve. 

“Looks like you’ve found your energy,” Bumblebee says, quirking an optic ridge.

He hasn’t, and Bumblebee’s looking at him with a knowing look, but he’s done stupider slag out of spite. Jerking off to annoy a hallucination hardly registers on that scale, really. 

Lifting a hand, he drags it lightly across the edge of a wing. He shivers, hips bucking up slightly against the weight of the hand still pressed against his array. For a moment, he loses himself in the sensation of it all, the careful press of digits against sensor-laden plating and the low-level charge crackling across his protoform. 

When Starscream looks up again, Bumblebee’s expression is a mix of irritation and something else that Starscream doesn’t have the mental capacity to decipher. Its gaze is fixed decidedly on his array, though, and that’s easy enough to interpret. 

He thinks that if he were a bit more sober, he might feel a bit more ridiculous about this whole thing. But he isn’t, and he doesn’t. So, instead, he shifts his hand to give Bumblebee a better view of his valve, which is beginning to drip pink lubricants onto the berth. The hallucination’s fingers twitch at its side in a suppressed motion that it seems to think better of.

“You know,” Starscream says, letting his voice drop to what he hopes is a conspiratorial whisper, “since all this is _annoying_ you, it’d be over faster if you helped.”

“Help?” The delusion quirks its helm, pulling its gaze up to Starscream’s face with a visible effort. “I don’t know what you expect me to do. I can’t exactly touch you.” It flexes its fingers as though to illustrate the point.

“Surely you can be more creative than that,” he says, spreading his thighs further apart, one hand still tracing along his wing. Like this, it’s frighteningly easy to forget that he’s the only mech in the room. It’s even easier not to care. 

Bumblebee shudders almost imperceptibly, mouth opening as though to say something. When no words are forthcoming, Starscream shutters his optics and lets his helm loll back against the headboard. 

He circles his node with a thumb, fingers teasing at the rim of his valve. 

“Don’t.” The voice, when it finally speaks, is so quiet that he almost misses it. Starscream stills. 

“Don’t _what?_ ” He hopes that the words come out on the proper side of coherence; the world is slipping about in a way that suggests he’s had more engex than he thought. 

“Don’t put your fingers in your valve.”

“And why shouldn’t I?” Starscream cants his hips and, since he’s already committed himself to being as annoying as possible and definitely for no other reason, he slides two of his fingers into his valve. His vents stutter at the sudden sensation of fullness. 

“ _Because_ ,” Bumblebee says, in a voice that is far too sincere for the situation at hand, “I want to see you.”

Starscream onlines an optic. His hallucination is _blushing_ , of all things, and suddenly this whole thing starts to feel pathetic again. Frag. 

He supposes it was too much to ask for an uninterrupted good time. No rest for the wicked and all that. 

“Yeah,” he says, shuttering his optic again, “you would say that.”

Nonetheless, he pulls his lubricant-slicked hand away from his valve and curls his fingers around his spike instead, giving it a firm stroke. 

Quietly, he thinks he hears a breathy, “Yeah, just like that,” but he supposes he might have imagined it (as if this isn’t all imaginary to begin with, _hah_!) He hates the way his spinal strut arches at the words, finds himself hoping that Bumblebee won’t notice before he remembers that Bumblebee is some fragged-up part of his consciousness and, as such, knows everything he does (and, sometimes, things he doesn’t).

Time dissolves into a haze, his processor caught up in the slide of his hand against his spike set to the background hum of his cooling fans, and he forgets the rest of the night for a moment as he chases his overload. 

His lines burn, and it doesn’t seem that important that he’s spent the better part of the evening talking to a hallucination ( _because nobody else wants to talk to him_ ). His free hand clutches at the sheets of his berth, and it doesn’t matter that if he turns on the lights his sparsely-decorated room will be littered with empty engex bottles ( _because it’s not like there’s anyone else here to complain about them_ ).

Starscream overloads with a shout that he instinctively muffles in the crook of his arm. He lies there for a moment, listening to his fans spin down. He can feel transfluid drying in stripes across his chest. The high doesn’t last more than a klik before he’s crashing again, and he expected that but that doesn’t mean he likes it any better. 

When he onlines his optics, the room is empty.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know I said it goes up from here, and that's true, but I don't know that this particular chapter qualifies as 'up', so. Oops.

Starscream isn’t talking to him, hasn’t so much as acknowledged him in days, and Bumblebee is definitely _not_ panicking about that. As it turns out, the only person who can see you suddenly refusing to acknowledge you at all really does a number on a bot. You’d think being dead would alleviate things like anxiety, but in that respect, as in most others, the afterlife is proving to be a disappointment.

He’s used to Starscream ignoring him once in a while-- he’d done it for ages when Bumblebee first showed up, and he does it every so often to prove his superiority in some sort of contest of will that Bumblebee has absolutely no interest in.

So it isn’t like he’s a stranger to the seeker’s silence, but after a while it starts to grate on him. And, a while after that, he begins to worry that Starscream isn’t just being petty, that maybe he really _can’t_ see him any more, and Bumblebee’s doomed to roam Cybertron alone for eternity, or however long this ghostly half-existence ends up lasting. 

The only thing keeping him somewhat collected, through meetings where Starscream stoically ignores his commentary and binge-drinking episodes where Starscream doesn’t heed his warnings, is that this particular round of non-acknowledgment began the morning after Starscream tried to involve Bumblebee in his drunken self-service.

‘Tried’ maybe isn’t the right word; if he’s honest, ‘succeeded’ is more accurate . And maybe it’d been stupid of him to respond (it had _definitely_ been stupid), but _frag_ if it hadn’t been nice to have Starscream act like he was a real person for a few minutes. Even if the context had been… less than ideal. 

He feels himself flushing at the memory (another thing he’d thought ghosts couldn’t do. The afterlife was turning out to be full of surprises). _“I want to see you.”_ What reckless impulse had spurred him to say that? 

In Bumblebee’s (admittedly limited) experience, things between the two of them go more smoothly if he pretends that Starscream still has some modicum of privacy. So, usually when Starscream opens up his panels, Bumblebee gets as far away as whatever cosmic force has tied him to Starscream will allow (not far, as it turns out; but usually far enough to put a door between them). It’s not far enough that he can’t hear Starscream’s moans (quieter than most people would imagine, he thinks), but it’s less awkward than hovering over Starscream while he overloads. 

Which is, of course, what he’d _done_. And he has to admit that the seeker, stripped of his usual pretensions and facades, had been picturesque. Usually his handsome features were twisted up in the trappings of a snarl, so that when he relaxed the difference was enough to make your spark stutter.

Objectively, of course. 

Bumblebee’s been following automatically behind Starscream, not paying any particular attention to where they’re going. He looks up when a wave of noise washes over him, finding himself accosted by the bright lights and crowds of Maccadam’s. 

Blurr’s bar seems to be doing good business today, and the ex-racer hardly spares a glance for them (for Starscream, he remembers belatedly) as Starscream settles himself into a corner table that mysteriously vacates itself of patrons as he approaches. 

After a few moments, Blurr swings by to deposit an unmarked bottle on the table, which Starscream picks up and drinks straight out of instead of pouring it into a glass. Bumblebee doesn’t know if Starscream had commed Blurr, or whether the bartender just knows what to bring him by now. 

Bumblebee settles himself in the seat beside Starscream, close enough that their legs are almost touching. If Bumblebee were still capable of touching people, that is. 

“Do you even remember the last time you had regular energon?” 

Unsurprisingly, Starscream ignores him and takes another swig of engex. That either means “frag off” or “you’ve been consigned to some ghostly hell-dimension that Starscream can’t experience,” and he really has no way of knowing which. Fantastic. 

Since Starscream seems thoroughly occupied with getting himself wasted, Bumblebee turns his attention to the bar’s other patrons. Blurr’s stopped flitting around the room, having been waylaid by an unsteady-looking Swindle who still manages to look conniving with a bright drink in hand. There’s a flash of blue plating that he thinks might be Chromia, but it’s gone again before he can be sure. 

Jazz and Sky-Byte are having an animated conversation that he can’t quite hear, Jazz leaning casually against the raised section of floor that serves as a stage, and he’s struck with a sudden wave of longing. Primus, he misses Jazz. He could use some of the mech’s optimism right about now, and maybe his old friend would have some sort of idea about what he was supposed to _do_. More than that, though, he misses being able to talk to someone that isn’t Starscream. 

Not that he can even talk to Starscream at the moment, he thinks, looking over at the seeker. He’s staring fixedly at some point in space, and every so often he lists slightly to one side as though he’s forgotten how to keep himself upright. 

“Look at all of them,” Starscream says suddenly. Bumblebee jumps, but it doesn’t seem like Starscream’s talking to him-- he’s still looking off into the middle distance, and his optics are dim and unfocused. 

“They’re all so...carefree,” he says, his plating flaring. “What have they done to deserve that?

He really is talking to himself now, and that hits Bumblebee with a pang. He supposes that, to Starscream, this is no different from talking to him. Someone nearby looks over and frowns, and Bumblebee feels maybe a bit guilty that whatever’s happening to him has convinced Starscream that he’s insane. 

“People don’t have to earn happiness, Starscream,” he says,crossing his arms on the table and resting his helm atop them. “It’s one of those things you’re just supposed to _have_. Then again, I guess if everyone got what they were supposed to, we wouldn’t have had a war.” 

Starscream looks at him, properly looks at him for the first time in days, and it seems like he’s going to argue, to say something spiteful, but instead his wings droop and his face crumples in on itself and he says, in the smallest voice Bumblebee’s ever heard him use, “This was supposed to be it.”

“What?” Bumblebee asks, his head still reeling from the confirmation that he does, in fact, still exist.

“This,” he says, gesturing expansively with his free hand. “Cybertron. The Metrotitan chose me. _Cybertron_ chose me. This was supposed to be my victory.” He lifts the bottle of engex and, finding it empty, puts it back down again. “It certainly doesn’t feel like I’ve won anything.”

Bumblebee looks down at his arms. They’re slightly transparent under the neon lights of the bar, and he can see the table through them. “Yeah,” he says. “I think I know what you mean.”

For once, Starscream doesn’t say anything snide about Bumblebee being a delusion. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all, just keeps staring pensively at the bottle of engex as though doing so will cause it to fill back up again. 

“You’ve gotta drink real energon at some point, you know,” Bumblebee says.

“You don’t go to a bar to drink _energon_. Besides, have you seen how much Blurr upcharges? Swindle’s having a terrible influence on him.” Starscream’s smiling, though, and Bumblebee thinks he might be too. For a moment, it feels almost like a real conversation. 

“You’ve gotta have some in those ridiculously large quarters you’ve claimed for yourself, right?” 

Starscream pauses for long enough that Bumblebee begins to think he probably _doesn’t_. He can’t recall the last time Starscream had something besides engex, actually, and that’s pretty troubling considering he has nothing better to do with his time than watch what Starscream does. 

“You should really go buy some; you’ve gotta be running on empty.”

“No.”

“No, you’re not under-fueled or no, you’re not going to put proper sustenance in your tanks?”

“Either. Both.” He’s looking sullenly into the middle distance again, and whatever rapport they might have been developing has vanished. Great. 

Well, then. It’s not like he’s got anything to lose. “So,” he says, “About that night.”

Starscream tenses, his plating pulling tight against his frame. It’s times like these when Bumblebee misses the ability to sense EM fields. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, and Bumblebee almost laughs because that’s the most transparent lie he’s ever heard. 

“We’re just going to pretend nothing happened, then?” 

“Nothing _did_ happen.”

“Right, yeah, and I’m sure the _nothing_ doesn’t relate in any way to the fact that you’ve been ignoring me.” 

Starscream mumbles something under his breath that Bumblebee doesn’t catch. He wishes fervently that they could have a single conversation where Starscream wasn’t drunk or petty or both. 

After a while, Starscream’s wings start to droop and his optics flicker. A few moments after that, he’s passed out on the table, one hand still curled around the empty engex bottle. 

Bumblebee resigns himself to another night of sitting listlessly in Maccadam’s until Starscream either rouses himself or Blurr kicks him out. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. 

It had come as a shock, the first time, that Starscream would let himself be so vulnerable in a public space, given his rampant paranoia. Bumblebee supposes that Starscream trusts Blurr enough to bet that he won’t let a murder occur in his bar, even if it is Starscream. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. 

Bumblebee frowns. He reaches out to touch Starscream’s shoulder, but his hand passes right through the plating. Just like always. He draws his hand back, fingers clenching helplessly. 

He hates this half-existence, hates that even if someone tried to kill Starscream he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, hates Starscream for refusing to look after himself in any but the most superficial of ways. 

He tells himself that he only cares because he doesn’t know what would happen to him if Starscream went offline, but he’s been around Starscream long enough to know a lie when he hears one.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wheeljack probably doesn't show up for *ages* and i'm sorry about that.

The next day, Starscream buys a cube of energon. 

Bumblebee doesn’t say ‘finally,’ or, ‘I told you so,’ or any of the other smug words that press up against his glossa, but he does allow himself a small smile when Starscream isn’t looking. 

Whatever satisfaction he feels, however, quickly fades, because as soon as Starscream’s finished with the energon, he goes right back to being insufferable. He’s got a meeting with Windblade, and Bumblebee should know better by now than to expect anything good to come of that.

To even call it a ‘meeting’ is probably a misnomer; the word generally implies some level of civility. There's nothing remotely civil about the way Starscream throws open the door to Metroplex’s brain chamber, which rebounds off the wall with a _crash_ that makes Bumblebee flinch. 

“Is that really _necessary_?” He hisses. Starscream, of course, pays him no mind. 

Windblade looks up from the makeshift workspace she’s put together next to Metroplex’s brain, her face creased in a frown. Bumblebee has to give her credit for her refusal to be intimidated by Starscream’s perpetually threatening atmosphere. 

“What do you want?” She asks, raising her arms above her head in a pointedly-careless stretching motion. 

“We were supposed to have a discussion about Metroplex’s repairs. About two hours ago.” Bumblebee can’t stop himself from laughing at that, and Starscream shoots him a glare that he returns with a lazy shrug. The seeker could use someone to knock him down a few pegs; Bumblebee just hopes Windblade’s irreverence doesn’t end in a nasty “accident”. He knows the kind of mech Starscream is, even as he holds out hope that this new world might shape him into someone kinder.

Windblade’s optics flick to the side as she checks her chronometer. “I must’ve lost track of the time. As you can see,” she says, gesturing at the stacks of datapads piled up around her, “I’ve been busy.” 

Starscream’s struts tense in anger, his wings quivering. “Starscream,” Bumbleblee begins, reaching out a futile hand, “don’t--”

His cautions fall on deaf audials. Starscream strides forward, his hands colliding sharply with Windblade’s makeshift desk. His sharp fingertips press thin furrows into the metal. Windblade meets his blazing optics, and Bumblebee can see hints of fear in her expression for the first time since Starscream had burst in.

“I’m beginning to think,” he says, “That you’re being purposefully unhelpful.” 

Windblade’s optics flicker. “I’m doing the best that I can, Starscream. The repairs are going to take time. Metroplex is a living being with a million moving parts, and rushing things will only end in disaster for everyone trying to eke out a life here.” Her own mouth curls into a snarl to mimic Starscream’s own. “Or do you want to be remembered as the mech who ruined his people’s lives?”

For a moment, Bumblebee’s afraid that Starscream is going to attack her, against every rule of propriety and good sense. Instead, he only straightens up and fixes her with a cold gaze. 

“I expect regular reports. _On time_. I would suggest you not test my patience.” Windblade doesn’t offer a reply, and Starscream doesn’t seem to expect one. He turns on his heel and walks out, failing to close the door behind him. Bumblebee looks back, as he’s pulled away, and catches a brief glimpse of Windblade with her head in her hands. 

Starscream walks in silence, apparently until he’s deemed that they’re far enough away from Windblade that she probably won’t hear. Then he turns to Bumblebee and says, “Can you believe her _nerve_? Nobody around here gives me the respect that I deserve.”

“Maybe everyone wouldn’t hate you if you didn’t insist on accusing them of plotting against you!” Bumblebee throws his hands in the air. “You know you don’t have to rule through fear, right? There’s such a thing as _trust_.”

Starscream just quirks an optic ridge at him. “Yeah? And how well did that work out for _you_?”

“Frag off,” Bumblebee says, and that’s the end of that. 

When they emerge from Metroplex’s winding corridors, Starscream shielding his eyes from the red-tinged light of the setting sun, Bumblebee thinks he’ll head back to the bar. But he doesn’t. Instead, he makes his way through the emptying streets, ignoring all of Bumblebee’s queries about where they’re going until he eventually gives up asking. 

When he reaches the edge of the living city, Starscream transforms into his alt mode and, before Bumblebee can object, he takes to the air. 

Bumblebee watches the landscape spool out below him, little more than a blurry streak of color, feeling like he’s about to purge tanks he no longer has. He’s adjusted to most of the quirks of this half-life, but he thinks flying’s one of those things he’ll never get used to. Especially since he doesn’t have any control, has no choice but to be pulled along according to Starscream’s whims. Not, he thinks bitterly, that this is very much different from how he spends the rest of his time.

After an interminable span, Bumblebee feels himself slow as Starscream transforms and lands. Wearily, he unshutters optics that had been offline for most of the flight. 

He doesn’t recognize where they are, but that’s not terribly surprising. He doesn’t recognize most of Cybertron, these days. Wherever this place is, it seems empty. Rugged peaks rise up around them, cutting off the sky, and far below he sees a river winding its way through a deep chasm. Everything is still, untouched, and there are no signs that any other being has ever set foot here.

While he’s been looking around, Starscream’s settled himself on the edge overhanging the chasm, pedes dangling out over empty air. Hesitantly, Bumblebee approaches the stationary seeker. 

He doesn’t want to speak first, to give Starscream the satisfaction of admitting how off-balance he is, so instead he settles himself to the ground and watches the last rays of sunlight fade away behind the mountains. It’s not until the stars have begun to glimmer faintly in the sky that Starscream speaks. 

“You know, when you first showed up I thought you were my conscience,” he says, face upturned. He looks tired, like the weight of millennia is catching up with him all at once.

“And now?”

“I don’t know. There’s a lot of things I’m not sure of, as it turns out. I thought I could escape everything, but the past follows me even here.” He gestures at Bumblebee, taking care, Bee notices, to avoid actually touching him, to avoid shattering any illusion that he’s really here. “Maybe that’s what you are. A reminder.”

“If you want to start over, you have to learn to _change_ first. You can’t keep living like we’re at war and everyone’s your enemy. Look what that did to Prowl.” _Look what it's doing to you_ , he doesn't say. 

“I’m _not_ Prowl.”

Bumblebee scrubs a hand across his face. “No, of course you’re not. But you can’t lead without trusting people, and gaining their trust in return. Even Megatron knew that, in the beginning.”

Starscream’s head whips around, his optics suddenly fever-bright. “And what do _you_ know about Megatron?”

“I just--”

“Don’t. I don’t care _what_ you are; do not compare me to Megatron.” His wings are twitching, and his hands have clenched into fists against the ground. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t-- I didn’t think. Do you want to… talk about it?” 

“No.” There’s a barely-restrained tension in his struts, as if at any moment he might leap up and take to the air again. Bumblebee changes the subject, though he files the topic away for later. 

“Why are we all the way out here, anyway?”

By degrees, the tension leaves Starscream’s frame. “It’s quieter out here, away from everything. It gets hard to think when people are constantly asking you for things, or vying for your attention.” Then, because he wouldn’t be Starscream if he weren’t at least a bit paranoid, he adds, “And I can be fairly certain that nobody’s watching me.”

“I guess that’s fair enough.” It’s not even like Bumblebee can blame him for being paranoid, what with all the enemies he’s made and keeps on making. It’s only a matter of time before someone possesses both the will and the ability to make a move on him, and Bumblebee would wager that Starscream knows it. Still, it’s frustrating to watch him burn every bridge he crosses. 

There’s nothing more to say after that, really. Starscream turns his face back to the sky, optics tracking the bright flashes of light that signify craft entering and leaving the atmosphere. Bumblebee suspects that he’s plotting some new, unnecessary gambit, but outwardly, at least, he looks peaceful. At one point, Starscream glances over, catching his gaze, and Bumblebee looks away, feeling oddly like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! bunch of warnings, with this, because it's the chapter where Starscream discusses Megatron, so blanket warnings for past abuse, memories thereof, ptsd, etc.
> 
> That said, let's do this thing.

_“And now?”_

_“I don’t know.”_

The conversation keeps swirling around in his head, like a turbofox chasing its own tail. The fact of the matter is that Starscream _doesn’t_ know what Bumblebee is. It seems too late in the game for him to have manifested a conscience, especially such a persistent one, and so he’s at a loss as to what else Bumblebee might _be_. 

He has another meeting with Windblade, in his own office this time, and Bumblebee keeps spewing that slag about trust, as though he hadn’t put his faith in someone before, as if that faith hadn’t burned away everything he had until only ash was left, slipping through his fingers--

Windblade is staring at him, her expression not quite concerned but close enough that the urge to lash out coils in his lines. “What?” He growls, annoyed half with her and half with the memories that refuse to leave him be, dredged up and set free by Bumblebee’s questions.

“I asked you a question,” she says, and because she insists on trying his patience she doesn’t tell him what that question _is_ , just looks at him expectantly. Great. 

“She asked if you’ve found any more mechs willing to work on the repair crews,” Bumblebee stage-whispers. And that’s-- that’s odd, isn’t it, that his delusion knows something he doesn’t?

He doesn’t have time to think further on it, though, because he gives Windblade a number and she responds that she needs more people than that, doesn’t he understand how much work there is to be done, and he’s saying that if she wants bigger repair crews she’s welcome to find the mechs to staff them herself, and throughout all of this Bumblebee is shaking his head in that sanctimonious way that Starscream has come to despise. 

In the end, Windblade ends up convincing him to scrounge up a few more mechs. Starscream attributes this entirely to the good influence he’s having on her debating skills, and not at all to the fact that Bumblebee gives him an increasingly disappointed look every time he says something even remotely menacing. Because the latter would imply that he _cares_ about the looks, which he absolutely does not. 

When Windblade finally leaves, Bumblebee drapes himself over the chair she’s just vacated, forcing Starscream to look at him--and when had he started thinking _he_ instead of _it_? 

“What do you want now?”

“I can’t help but notice that conversation was almost _polite_. For you, at least.” He says, in a voice that’s just a little too smug to sound sincere.

“Yes, yes, _do_ feel free to congratulate yourself on your _diplomatic influence_ ,” Starscream says, picking up a datapad and scrolling idly through the contents. It’s a report on energon supplies (low) and incomes (lower), and he quickly places it back on the desk. 

“I’m just saying, it’s nice to see.”

“Thank you, Bumblebee; your input is noticed and appreciated.”

Bumblebee clambers out of the chair and leans against the front of Starscream’s desk, his accusatory optics disconcertingly close. “What’s gotten into you today?”

“Nothing.” He leans back in an artless attempt to put some distance between them.

There’s that disappointed frown again. “I wish you’d stop lying.”

Starscream stares at him for a long moment, the silence between them growing heavy. He supposes that Bumblebee has a point. If there’s anyone he can be honest with, it’s probably Bumblebee, who can’t possibly convey anything he learns to anyone. Somewhere in the back of his processor, Megatron sneers at him.

“Fine,” he says, finally, averting his optics as he bends to rummage around in one of his desk drawers. “But I’m sure as slag not doing this sober.” 

“Doing what?” Bumblebee asks, carefully settling himself on the edge of Starscream’s desk as Starscream finds the bottle he was looking for and takes a long drink from it. 

“You wanted to know about Megatron,” Starscream says, swiping a hand across his lips and then spreading his arms wide. “Ask away.”

“Actually, I asked what was bothering you.”

“What _isn’t_ bothering me these days?” Starscream is glad that he can’t see the smile he plasters on his face, because he’s sure it’s not at all convincing. 

Bumblebee’s just _looking_ at him, much too closely for Starscream’s liking. But the engex is powerful stuff, and already he can feel the beginnings of hazy warmth spreading out from his tanks. 

Eventually, Bumblebee says, “What was he like?” His voice is measured, careful, like he’s afraid of breaking something fragile. Laughter threatens to spill from Starscream’s intake; Megatron had seen that anything breakable in him was shattered long ago.

“Surely you know that! Or weren’t you paying attention during the war? Gotta give you credit, though; mostly people just ask how he was in berth.” 

“I mean at the beginning,” Bumblebee says, and that shuts him right up. His processor is drawn back, almost unwillingly, to that hazy time before the war had begun, before factions had been forged from the spilled energon of their constituents. 

“At the beginning,” he echoes, softly. “It’s funny, you know? Mechs don’t think to ask what he _used to be_. They just imagine that he was always, y’know,” he waves a hand about in a way that fails to convey anything useful, “ _evil_ , or what-have-you. Like everyone would have joined up if he’d been a tyrant from the get-go.”

“Why _did_ you join up?”

“Who wouldn’t have? He was charismatic and full of promises for a better world, and he had the strength to back it up.” He can remember the first time he saw Megatron, in the gladiator arena, the harsh Cybertronian sun sending shards of light dancing off his armor. Energon had dripped from his clenched fists, and Starscream would forever deny that he’d been immediately enamored. 

He’s almost forgotten that Bumblebee is there, as he continues: “The way he moved, the way he spoke, the way he wrote-- it was an ambrosia to us, and he was like a god to those who would never dare to even think such things. You’d have been hard pressed to find a mech who wasn’t at least a little bit in love with him, back then.” 

“It sounds like you still are.”

Anger blooms in his tanks, but it’s quickly stifled by the drowsy weight of engex. So he just laughs, and he ignores the ragged edge to it. “You sure do say some stupid slag sometimes, Goldenrod. I _hate_ him, but that doesn’t mean I can’t acknowledge that he had the right idea, once.” He thinks that 'hate' is such a handy word, neatly packaging up years of things that don't bear thinking about.

“And yet, you stayed. For millions of years. That was one of the things we could never figure out; you’re smart enough that you could’ve escaped at any point after things went south, but you never did.”

“So you think I’m smart, do you?” He says, leering. When Bumblebee doesn’t respond with anything but a raised optic ridge, Starscream remembers that he’s probably talking to a hallucination. His faceplates flush as he looks away. 

“It wasn’t as easy as you’d think. To leave. He was like a planet, larger than life, and his gravity was always tugging at you. You’d stick around, waiting for the fulfillment of all those lovely promises he’d made, and by the time you realized they were false he had his hands wrapped tight around your spark.” He feels something against his chest and, disjointedly, realizes his fingers are digging into the metal of his plating without him having made any conscious decision to put them there. 

“Did you know that Decepticon insignias are made from a mech’s spark casing? Imagine that, being so dedicated to a cause that you’d put a part of your very soul into it. It’s hard to leave something like that.”

“Drift managed it.” There’s no accusation in Bumblebee’s tone, but still Starscream bristles at the implication.

“Yes, and _Drift_ was never half as close to Megatron as I was from the start. And _Drift_ had Wing and the entire fragging Crystal City to help him. I didn’t have...that,” he finishes lamely, hoping that Bumblebee doesn’t catch the _anyone_ that lingers unspoken on his glossa.

“You still could’ve managed it. You almost did, several times.”

“But where would I have _gone_? I was never suited to being an outcast. What was there for me, besides the hope that someday Megatron would fall for good, and I could lead us all to the victory he was too shortsighted to grasp?” 

Bumblebee’s quiet, then, and Starscream appreciates that he doesn’t try to offer any empty platitudes. “What changed?” He asks, after a while.

Starscream looks up from where he’s been swirling the dregs that remain in his bottle of engex. “Hm?”

“With Megatron. You clearly loved him, once. What did he do that made you stop?”

Starscream throws back his head and laughs. “What _didn’t_ he do, Goldenrod? Once the war started, everything fell to pieces. We started to disagree fundamentally, because he seemed dead-set on throwing us into a protracted war that anyone with functional optics could tell was going to cost more than we could afford to lose.” He tosses the rest of the engex down his intake and sets the bottle on his desk with shaking hands. “And then we started to disagree _personally_ , which is a roundabout way of saying that he took a liking to beating the slag out of me.”

He remembers that perfectly, as well: the way Megatron’s fist had collided with his chest, Starscream’s sensors not transmitting pain at first, only confusion, surprise, as his plating crumpled like so much wet paper. He remembers the terrible look in Megatron’s optics, horror at what he’d done warring with a desire to do it again. 

“And after that, he stopped fragging me for a while. And then he started up again, and that was _worse_.” He’d thought it meant things were getting better, when Megatron took him back to berth, but that had just been a new form of torture. The memory of fingers slide over his plating, and he shivers in disgust. Something cold and awful is seeping into the seams of his armor and filtering into his lines, and the engex isn’t doing anything to offset it. 

“I’m sorry,” Bumblebee says, and Starscream levels dulled optics at him. “I know that doesn’t fix things, doesn’t even come close but-- thank you. For trusting me.” And then, even softer: “You didn’t deserve it, you know.”

Starscream scoffs. He’s half-listening, half caught up in memories that are feeling more real by the moment. Bumblebee’s saying, “Whatever you did-- and I’m sure I don’t know _half_ the things you did-- you still deserved better than he treated you,” and then slightly to the side and a thousand years away fingers are delving into his seams, rough hands are pinning him against a wall and pressing insistently at the panels protecting his array, and suddenly he’s on his hands and knees, purging the engex from his tanks onto his office floor. 

The memories recede, though, and he’s left with shaking struts and the sound of Bumblebee’s voice, a panicked-sounding string of words that jumble together into an incomprehensible mess in Starscream’s processor. He shakes his helm and Bumblebee seems to take the hint, because he stops talking. 

After a while, he manages to right himself enough to sit back against his desk. From his new vantage, he can see out the wall-length windows to the city below. It’s still mostly dark, but here and there he sees patches of light, places where mechs are carving out lives for themselves in this new-old world. It settles him, somewhat, reminds him that he has a future that doesn’t have to depend on his past.

He sees Bumblebee, hovering uncertainly at the edge of his field of vision, and pats the ground next to him. Cautiously, Bumblebee comes to sit beside him. 

“Did you--” Starscream’s vocalizer shorts out, and he has to reset it before he can continue, “Did you learn what you were after?” 

“I didn’t mean to--” Bumblebee begins, but Starscream cuts him off with a wave of his hand.

“Not your fault.”

“I meant what I said, you know. About you not deserving it.”

“I know.” Starscream places his hand next to where Bumblebee’s rests, almost but not-quite touching. Bumblebee looks at it, then up at Starscream’s face, and his smile is soft and sad.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick note: this chapter ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, and due to several pieces of Fuckery colliding in my personal life I can't tell you when the next chapter will be up (probably not more than a week or two, I'd think, but I don't know), so keep that in mind if you want to wait for that, I guess.

Since the first night that Bumblebee had seen him fall into recharge, Starscream has had nightmares. Mostly they’re small, visible only in restless way he tosses, but sometimes they’re grand affairs where wordless static spills from his vocalizer (selfishly, Bumblebee is always glad that the words are lost to him), and his panicked thrashing eventually throws him onto the floor, where he lays with wide-open optics, perfectly still and silent except for a slight trembling.

After the talk they’d had, Bumblebee’s pretty sure he knows what Starscream sees in the darkness of his shuttered optics, and he finds it harder than he once did to blame Starscream for the way he avoids recharging until weariness hangs from every one of his struts like a sodden blanket. 

Bumblebee had thought he’d known what took place between Megatron and Starscream, more or less. He’d seen the reports; he’d compiled some of them himself. But as it turns out, there’s a world of difference between the words on a pad and the faraway look in Starscream’s optics as he recounts events that had shaken him to his very core, broken and remolded him countless times until he was a loosely bound collection of contradictory shards. 

Bumblebee can’t hate Megatron more than he already does for all the horrors he’s committed, but for those moments he had wished that he could, that he could be properly _furious_ on the behalf of a mech who had believed in a cause that destroyed him. 

It makes him wonder what kind of mech Starscream would’ve been, given the chance. He has no doubt that the seeker was always conniving, full of ambition, but there’s no knowing what he would’ve _done_ with that processor of his if Megatron hadn’t put it to the cause of destruction. 

He’s drawn back to the present, to the darkness of Starscream’s dismally barren quarters, by a sound. At first he thinks it’s only static, like usual, but after a moment he’s able to make out words, though he immediately wishes he wasn’t. Because what Starscream’s saying is _‘Why’_ and _‘What did I do wrong?’_ and, quietly, _‘Please’_. And none of it sounds at all angry, or bitter, or smug. It just sounds afraid, and terribly vulnerable in a way that Starscream would never let himself be while awake. 

Bumblebee hovers next to Starscream’s prone form, a feeling of desperate uselessness washing over him. He has no choice but to bear witness to these nightmares, helpless to do anything but watch. He had tried, in the early days, to wake the seeker, but his words had fallen on deaf audials. And, as it turns out, his words are the only asset left to him. 

He watches as one of Starscream’s trembling wings scrapes against the wall, drawing sparks. With all the sensors embedded in that thin metal, Bumblebee’s sure that it hurts. When he eventually returns his gaze to Starscream’s face, Bumblebee realizes with a start that his optics are online, burning points of red in the darkness. 

“‘S kinda creepy, waking up to you staring at me,” he says, in a voice fuzzy with lingering static. The smugness is back, though, and Bumblebee can’t help but be a bit grateful for that. Starscream doesn’t say anything about whatever he’s been dreaming about. He never does. Bumblebee lets it go; he’s forced Starscream to give up enough secrets recently. 

“It’s not exactly a treat for me, either.” 

“At least you get to look at _me_ ,” Starscream says, smirking, and really, why does Bumblebee even _bother_. 

“Of course. You’ve caught me: I’m hopelessly in love with you,” he says, deadpan, though he can’t help but crack a smile when Starscream snickers. 

“I can’t blame you; I am _irresistible_ , after all.” He says, sitting up and stretching, a faint twitch in his scraped wing the only sign of his restless dreams. “Though I’m afraid you’ll have to fight off the scores of suitors if you want to stand any chance.” 

“Anything for you, dear,” Bumblebee says, and that gets him a real laugh. He gets lost for a moment in the way Starscream’s face lights up, and the next thing he knows Starscream’s giving him a questioning look that he quickly averts his optics from. 

Then Starscream’s getting up, and Bumblebee almost says something about how he really hasn’t gotten enough recharge before he realizes that all it will do is make Starscream snippy again. At least, he thinks as Starscream absentmindedly grabs a cube of energon, he’s stopped starving himself. 

And, he reflects, Starscream’s also being more amiable to people. Not really _nice_ , as such, but better than he's been. His interactions with Windblade have started to feel more like friendly rivalry than a recasting of Decepticon high command. He does make a point, though, of telling her not to trust anyone, and Bumblebee fervently hopes that she never takes that advice. Cybertron can only handle so many power-hungry despots, even if Bumblebee’s developing a reluctant soft spot for one of them.

Later that day, after Starscream’s haggled with Windblade and sent Rattrap on a mission that seems more designed to keep the mech occupied than to gather any useful information, they wind up at Maccadam’s again. 

Starscream settles himself into his usual corner and Bumblebee expects him to start his usual routine of getting stupidly drunk. Instead, though, he turns to Bumblebee and asks, “What sort of thing do you like to drink?”

Bumblebee just looks at him, wondering if he’s somehow forgotten. “I’m dead, Starscream. I can’t drink anything.”

He rolls his optics. “I get that, thanks. What _did_ you like to drink, then, when you were still occupying the mortal plane?”

“I wasn’t a big fan of bars, actually.” They were loud, and crowded with mechs who were usually looking to make trouble. Before the war he hadn’t really had any reason to visit one, and during the war he hadn’t had the time. And now, he supposes, he’s dead. Of all the things he’s probably missed out on, bars aren’t particularly high on his list of regrets.

“Helpful,” Starscream remarks dryly, waving Blurr over. As the bartender approaches, holding a precarious-looking tray of multicolored drinks, it strikes Bumblebee that Starscream’s stopped insisting he’s a hallucination. Now, if only he had any idea what that _meant_ , whether Starscream’s starting to believe him about the whole ‘ghost’ thing or if he’s just tired of arguing.

“Blurr!” Starscream says, jovially.

Blurr gives him an unimpressed look. “What do you want?”

“Do you treat everyone this warmly?”

“Nope. Mostly just you.” He says, twirling the tray in a way that makes the stacked glasses clatter alarmingly. “Now, did you want something or are you just wasting my time?”

Bumblebee hides his smirk behind a hand as Starscream puffs up, looking affronted. “I just wanted to ask if you had any suggestions for drinks. It is your _job_ , after all.”

Blurr purses his lips. “Something suited for our illustrious Chosen One? Let me think, let me think-- something bitter, I’d suggest, that burns your throat when you drink it. Hold on just a klik, I think I know just the thing.” He flits away, leaving Starscream blinking in his wake as his processor tries to catch up to the fact that he’s being insulted. 

“I can shut this place down, you know!” He yells at Blurr’s retreating form.

“I’d like to see you try!” The words drift back over the crowd, tinged with amusement. 

“Stuck-up fragger,” he mutters.

“Yeah, but he’s the stuck-up fragger that sells you your drinks. You should probably be nicer to him, or he’s going to poison you one day.”

“If he were going to do that, he’d have done it already,” Starscream says, waving a hand, and before Bumblebee can argue further Blurr’s back with a glass in hand. 

“I’ll just add this to your tab,” he says, with a smile that means he’s going to overcharge outrageously and there’s nothing Starscream can do about it. Starscream glares at him, but he takes the drink. 

Starscream watches him leave, taking a speculative sip. Immediately, he gags. “This is practically undrinkable,” he says, glaring down at the engex like it’s personally offended him.

“You asked for a drink from someone who hates you, Starscream. What’d you expect?”

“A degree of professional courtesy,” he says bitterly, taking a large gulp of engex that the look on his face says he immediately regrets. 

“Yes, because _you’re_ always the epitome of professionalism.”

Starscream sticks out his glossa, and Bumblebee can just barely make out the tips of his pointed dentae. 

Bumblebee expects him to order more drinks, after that, but he doesn’t. He just spins the glass idly in one hand, helm resting on the other, and watches the bar’s patrons go about their lives. 

Jazz isn’t in attendance today (or he’s lurking somewhere; either way, Bumblebee isn’t going to see him), but Sky-Byte’s reciting some of that esoteric poetry of his. Every so often a word or two breaks through the general buzz of conversation, but not enough for Bumblebee to grasp much of the meaning.

It’s almost… peaceful. It feels, for the first time, like they might really have left the war behind for good. 

Later, when Starscream’s tired of people-watching, they make their way back to his quarters. He sprawls on the berth, data-pad in hand. 

All things considered, life (such as it is) seems to be looking up. Starscream’s taken to having real conversations with him, now, and he’s beginning to think that this afterlife isn’t the worst fate that could have befallen him. 

It’s at this moment, as careful warmth begins to blossom in Bumblebee’s ethereal chest, that somebody finally tries to assassinate Starscream.


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said this would be a while, but I'm a dirty filthy liar.  
> The next chapter probably actually will be a while, because I have less of the specifics figured out, and the previously mentioning Fuckery is still converging. 
> 
> Enjoy (???) this, though.

It starts out as a faint rumbling, a tremor just on the edge of perception. A precariously-poised bottle falls to the floor, scattering glass shards and engex across the room. Starscream looks up from the pad he’s been reading, his lips starting to curl into a familiar grimace.

Bumblebee has time to say, “What--?” before the wall explodes inward, sending jagged lances of metal spinning through the air. The lights go out with a crisp _pop_ , and everything is wreathed in a suffocating darkness. 

The noise of the explosion is awful, but the silence it leaves in its wake is far worse. As the creak of settling metal fades, Bumblebee is left alone with his desperate, wheeling thoughts. There’s no way of knowing exactly where Starscream is amidst all the wreckage, or whether he’s even _alive_. 

He’s probably alive, right? Primus, let him be alive. 

Through the hole where a wall had once stood, something catches his optic: a dark shape against a starry backdrop. It makes a slight movement that Bumblebee doesn’t quite process, but before he has time to think about it any further flames begin to bloom among the debris like terrible, bright flowers.

“Frag,” he says, panic curling its cold fingers around his extinguished spark. “Frag, frag, frag.”

He shakes his head, trying to calm his racing processor. The war might be over, but that doesn’t mean he’s lost all the instincts it honed. He just needs to focus, to think clearly. 

Something (Intuition? The faint gleam of red plating?) draws his attention to the berth, which has flipped over and is resting at an angle against the opposite wall across the room from where it had started. Immediately, he’s almost sure that’s where he’ll find Starscream. 

With a fearful optic trained on the spreading flames, he makes his way over to the berth. He drops to his knees, trying to get a better view, and flinches back in shock. Starscream’s here, all right, but even to Bumblebee’s untrained optic it looks like he’s in bad shape. 

One of his optics is cracked and dark, and the other is flickering wildly. Cuts and scrapes mar his frame, most of them dripping energon. The worst thing, though, is the large shard of metal that’s stabbed entirely through his wing, pinning him to the wall. Every few seconds the wing twitches spastically, releasing a gush of energon that adds to the slowly-growing pool around him. 

“Starscream?” His voice is little more than a whisper, swallowed by the yawning fear within him. He tries again: “Starscream!”

Painstakingly, Starscream turns his head, wincing as a shower of sparks bursts from one of his joints. There’s a grating, awful sound that Bumblebee belatedly realizes is laughter; something must’ve damaged Starscream’s vocalizer. 

After a while, the laughter trails off and Starscream says, “Fancy meeting you here, Buttercup. Guess even dying didn’t knock the crazy out of me, huh?” His voice is garbled, its pitch fluctuating between words, and Bumblebee has to lean in closer to hear him.

“Shut up,” Bumblebee says, dizzy with relief, because at least Starscream’s still alive, and if he’s alive they can fix this. “You aren’t crazy, and you aren’t dying.”

“Well, if you say so it _must_ be true,” he says, and Bumblebee doesn’t know whether he should be annoyed or impressed that the seeker can be such a smug aft even while he’s bleeding out on the floor of his destroyed berthroom. 

“Be serious, for once, will you? I’m pretty sure someone just tried to _kill_ you.”

“Didn’t do a very good job of it,” he says, but when he coughs energon drips from his lips.

“They’ll have done a fine job if you don’t get out of here,” Bumblebee says. “There’s a fire, and I don’t know how long we’ve got until this whole place comes down.”

“A fire?” For the first time, there’s a spark of fear in his good optic. Foolishly, Bumblebee thinks that he’s finally grasped the threat to his life. As it turns out later, he’s worried about something else entirely. 

“Yeah. Now, c’mon--” Bumblebee reaches out to the metal impaled in Starscream’s wing, cursing when his hands pass right through it. “You’re gonna have to get yourself out of here.”

“Typical. Gotta do everything myself,” he says, but when he reaches up and gives the shard an exploratory tug his optic flashes blindingly bright and his vocalizer emits a high-pitched screech before cutting out entirely. 

“Starscream?” Bumblebee says, that now-familiar panic beginning to creep back in when Starscream doesn’t move. Out of the corner of his optic, he sees flames. 

“ _Frag_ ,” he whispers. Pointlessly, he stretches his arms out to the metal again. Except that this time, for a brief moment, his hands grasp tight around the shard and pull. It clatters to the ground and Bumblebee’s left staring at it in stunned incomprehension.

“What,” Starscream says, evidently having rebooted his vocalizer, “the slag.” When Bumblebee looks over, Starscream’s working optic is wide. He reaches out a trembling hand, but it passes straight through Bumblebee. Like usual. 

“I don’t know. We can figure it out later, but right now we’ve got to get moving.” The flames are licking up against the edges of the berth now, and the ceiling’s making noises that suggest it’s on the verge of giving way as well.

“Yeah. Okay.” Starscream says, levering himself up, and if the circumstances weren’t so dire Bumblebee might have appreciated the rare acquiescence. Starscream flinches, and more sparks spray from an over-stressed joint, but he manages.

He staggers to the door, leaning heavily on the wall. Painstakingly, he levers himself down the stairs, his progress marked by a trail of energon. It’s dark in the stairwell, and parts of the wall are collapsed inward. If he had to guess, Bumblebee would say that there’d been multiple explosions. Someone had wanted to be thorough.

When Starscream reaches the ground level, instead of heading outside he braces himself against the wall and proceeds to run his hand along its surface. 

“Starscream, we don’t have _time_ \--”

“This is important. Trust me.” He says, pressing against a section of unremarkable grey metal. A portion of the wall slides open, revealing the entryway to a room that Bumblebee’s never seen. _Trust me_ , he thinks, as he follows Starscream inside, _That’s a laugh_. It shouldn’t surprise him that Starscream still had secrets he knows nothing about, but somehow it does. 

The interior of the room is lit with the soft red glow of emergency lighting, remarkable because nothing else in Starscream’s quarters has had anything of the sort. One wall is composed entirely of monitors, all of them currently dark or flashing urgent error messages.

And in the middle of the room, one hand resting against the side of a cracked CR chamber, is Wheeljack.

He looks up, the expression in his optics mirroring the confusion Bumblebee feels, and says, softly, “Starscream?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still... kind of a cliffhanger, but i'd hope its a slightly less ominous one


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. exams are over; i'm back from the dead  
> 2\. how about that tf annual, huh  
> 3\. [my tumblr](http://www.carsassians.tumblr.com) if you ever want to talk to me about this fic, or starscream, or wheeljack, or anything really

Wheeljack’s memories drift back to him in fragments, hazy and uncertain, as his processor sifts through corrupted memory files. He remembers Megatron, his plating rent and shattered, Wheeljack’s own hands patching him back together. He remembers the riots, mechs flowing through the streets like a living stream, heedless of anything in their path. 

Unfolding before him, he sees Prowl shoving him to his knees, a chill flooding his lines as he recognizes the shape of a gun barrel pressed to the back of his head. Starscream kneels beside him, his field exuding a numb shock that threatens to seep into Wheeljack’s seams and paralyze him. Bumblebee bursts in, and Wheeljack opens his mouth to warn him, sees Starscream’s optics widen almost imperceptibly, feels the slight vibration against his helm that means the gun’s firing sequence has engaged. He remembers--

His optics fly open. His vision is blurred in a way that refuses to resolve itself no matter how many times he resets his optics. He’s just beginning to worry when he realizes that the problem isn’t with his optics at all, but rather a quality of his surroundings: he’s viewing the room through the bluish gel and thick glass of a CR chamber. 

That’s not particularly strange, given that the last thing he remembers is a gunshot to the head-- really, the fact that he’s waking up at all is bordering on miraculous. No, the strange thing is that, outside of the chamber, everything is lit in shades of red. There are banks of monitors set up against the wall, and what he can make out doesn’t look promising. He’s seen (caused) enough critical failures to recognize a system on the brink of total shutdown.

So, really, this second chance at life doesn’t seem like it’s panning out too well right now. That’s okay, though: he works best under pressure. (Or, at least, he’s told that lie enough times that it’s at least a little bit true by now).

He runs a quick self-diagnostic. Good news: most of his essential systems seem to be in working order; better, actually, than he has any right to expect. Bad news: all of his weapons are offline. So he isn’t blasting his way out of here. 

While he’s trying to figure out how to get himself out of this with no tools and no firepower, the door to the chamber slides open. _Well_ , he thinks, stumbling to his knees as the gel abruptly stops supporting him, _That’s one way to do it_. 

Now that he’s in the room proper, he can see what’s been causing the errors: the walls are veined with cracks, whole plates of metal dislodged by some cataclysmic force. Smoke is drifting in through the openings, and the shrill keening of an alarm echoes in his audials. 

Given that no medics have come to check up on him, he’s assuming this isn’t a medical facility. Which leaves… what? With his recent luck, probably nothing good. 

If this place belongs to an enemy, there’s no telling how long he has before someone comes along to check up on their prisoner. If it belongs to someone well-disposed, why hadn’t they simply taken him to a med-center? Why keep him down here for-- he checks his chronometer-- nearly a _year_? 

He pushes himself to his pedes, struts protesting after their long stint of disuse. Bracing his weight against the glass of the CR chamber, he notices for the first time the cracks that have spiderwebbed across it. Damage from the same thing that had done a number on the walls, if he had to guess. It’s probably the reason he’s finally conscious; some sort of automatic security system that had spit him out when the pod was damaged. 

It’s at this point that he hits another snag: as far as he can tell, the room doesn’t have any doors. That isn’t to say that there _aren’t_ any, but it does mean he’s gonna have to find them, with his processor still rebooting and all of the computers on the fritz. 

He’s trying to coerce his pedes into motion when a section of the wall folds back in on itself, revealing an opening that leads out to a darkened corridor. He has the sense that everything is turning out a bit too _convenient_ , but that thought (and everything else) is knocked from his processor as his optics parse the figure that has appeared in the newly-opened doorway.

It's a seeker frame, there’s no mistaking that. Wheeljack thinks the paintjob is red, but then everything looks red in the dim glow of the emergency lighting. Something drips from the seeker, falling to the floor with a soft, wet sound, and it’s then that Wheeljack realizes in dawning horror that there’s a ragged hole punched straight through the mech’s wing. Energon wells up around the edges of the wound, dribbling onto the plane of his wing in time with the pulse of his spark. 

The rest of the mech’s frame doesn’t seem to have fared much better: the plating is dented in several places, and parts look almost like they’ve been singed. When he directs his gaze higher, he finds himself looking into one of the last faces he’d seen before he’d been forcibly offlined. He looks more fatigued than Wheeljack remembers, and one of his optics is dim and cracked, but still--

“Starscream?” He asks. Starscream sways back at the sound of his name, as though it’s a physical blow. His one good optic darts about like he’s trying to focus but can’t quite manage it. 

“You’re-- not supposed to be awake,” he slurs. It sounds like there’s something wrong with his vocalizer, on top of everything else. 

“What am I doing down here? What’s going on? Are we under attack?” His words trip over one another in their haste to escape his intake

Starscream ex-vents shakily, slumping against the doorframe. More energon spatters to the ground.

“What’s going on?” Wheeljack repeats, more softly this time. 

Starscream’s optic has been fixed on him, but suddenly it darts to the side and he hisses, “Don’t you think I _know_ \--” before cutting himself off with a hasty look back at Wheeljack. His field, when Wheeljack reaches out to it hesitantly, is a maelstrom of ill-defined emotions that reminds him of a wounded mechanimal. 

Wheeljack pulls back, disconcerted, with the feeling that he’s violated something. Now that he’s aware of it, though, he can still feel the edges of Starscream’s field scraping across his own in a way that sets his dentae on edge. 

Eventually, Starscream collects himself enough to say, “You were injured.”

Wheeljack resists the urge to roll his optics. Starscream might be wounded, sure, but he’s still being deliberately obtuse. “Yes, I remember. That doesn’t explain what I’m doing here, or why you look like _this_ ,” Wheeljack says, waving a hand at the seeker’s mangled frame.

Starscream growls, but Wheeljack gets the distinct impression that the sound isn’t directed at him. After a silence that stretches on a bit too long, he says, “Everything happened so fast. There was energon everywhere, your helm was _gone_. I thought you were dead. You _should’ve_ been dead, but later, when Rattrap brought you to me, there was still a hint of life in your circuits.”

“So you put me here. But why? Why not send me to a medic?”

“They tried to _kill_ you, Wheeljack. They almost succeeded. If you think I was just going to leave you in some unprotected med-center so they could finish the job--” His agitated rant is cut off by a fit of coughing that sounds wet and painful.

“Starscream, plenty of people have tried to kill me. Pit, _you’ve_ probably tried to kill me.” It’s almost endearing that the seeker had been worried about him, though. Not quite endearing enough to offset the creepiness of having secreted him away in some personal CR chamber, but still. 

Starscream waves a hand, dismissing the idea. The movement throws him off-kilter, and he nearly falls before catching himself, his undamaged optic flickering wildly. 

Wheeljack mentally reorganizes his priorities from _Interrogate Starscream_ to _Find Starscream a medic so he doesn’t offline himself before you get any answers out of him_. Whatever Wheeljack thinks of him or what he’s done, the mech is no use to anyone if he's dead. 

It’s been long enough since he came online that Wheeljack thinks his struts have probably steadied themselves enough to allow him locomotion. A hesitant step forward confirms his hypothesis, and he crosses the room with as much confidence as he can muster. 

Starscream’s slouched enough that he has to look up at Wheeljack. He suffers that indignity for a few kliks before resigning himself to staring straight ahead at Wheeljack’s chassis sulkily. 

“C’mon,” Wheeljack says. “We should get you to a medic.”

“‘M fine,” Starscream mumbles.

“Yeah, sure you are,” Wheeljack crosses his arms. “Can you get up?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Starscream says, but he doesn’t make any effort to move.

Wheeljack watches him slide, incrementally, down the wall for a few more moments before he says, “Right, I’ve had enough of this.”

Starscream opens his mouth, probably to ask what he means, but by that point Wheeljack’s already wrapping his arms around the seeker and lifting him. Whatever Starscream had been about to say dissolves into furious sputtering. 

“What do you think you’re _doing_?” He hisses, once he’s composed himself enough to speak coherently again. There’s a sharp, pained edge to the words, but there’s nothing to be done about that right now. “You can’t just sling me around like--like so many _spare parts!_ ”

“Seems like I can, actually,” Wheeljack says mildly. “Now, are you going to tell me where to find a medic, or am I going to have to go looking for someone to ask?” 

“...Flatline,” Starscrean says, and rattles off a series of directions that Wheeljack does his best to keep track of. 

“Just so you know--” he says, voice fritzing into static as Wheeljack’s first step jostles him, “--I don’t approve of this.” 

This close, it’s impossible to shut out the near-panic of Starscream’s field. But all Wheeljack says is, “Noted.”

It’s only a few more steps before he decides that haste is more important than caution, at this point. Wheeljack’s plating is slick with energon where it comes in contact with Starscream’s frame. Wheeljack might not know what’s been happening while he was out of commission, or what events have led Starscream to this sorry state, but he _does_ know that he’ll never find out if he lets Starscream bleed to death.

Plus, he has to admit that even though it’s _Starscream_ , he’d rather not let a mech die when he can prevent it. Especially when the war’s supposed to be _over_ , after all. Primus, he’s seen enough death to last him a lifetime. 

“We’ll be there soon,” he says. “You’ll be fine.” Starscream, optics shut tight and clawed fingertips pricking small holes in Wheeljack’s frame, doesn’t respond, but Wheeljack feels gratitude bloom briefly in the seeker's field.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I read & appreciate all your lovely comments, and if I ever don't reply it's because of my Somewhat Debilitating social anxiety and not at all a reflection of how much I appreciate you ;;  
> 2\. this chapter was... weirdly hard to write? i don't know if that's just the writer's block or what but... blegh  
> 3\. canon may start getting a bit... fucky here. as in, i'm going to ignore or mess with it if/when it interferes with the things i'm trying to do with the story.

Flatline’s not terribly amused to find someone knocking at his door so early in the morning, but his attitude changes quickly enough once he sees who his visitors are. It’s not every day that a mech who's supposed to be dead shows up holding the battered frame of your planet’s leader, after all. 

He ushers them inside, glancing out into the darkness as he shuts his door. Wheeljack absently wonders if _everyone_ is this paranoid, or whether it’s a side effect of associating with Starscream. 

Flatline has a bevy of questions for him, none of which he can answer. After several fruitless attempts, the medic gives him a look of contempt and turns away to rummage in his drawers. Wheeljack sets Starscream down on a medical slab, frowning when he fails to react. A quiet Starscream is a deeply unsettling thing, as it turns out. 

He realizes he’s left a hand resting on Starscream’s chest plating. Starscream’s spark pulses faintly beneath his fingers. He’s transfixed for a moment by the sensation, and it’s only when Flatline taps him on the shoulder that he remembers where he is.

Then Flatline’s prodding at him with an assortment of medical tools, the expression on his face growing more and more pinched with every result. Wheeljack fights the urge to tell him that he’s fine, that Starscream’s the one who needs his attentions. He reminds himself that this was the medic Starscream had named. He has to have _some_ faith in him, right? 

Then again, it’s not like Starscream has the best track record for selecting trustworthy mechs. The thought makes him flinch, earning him an accusatory glare. 

Across the room, from a shelf that’s mostly blocked from view by a slab, something falls to the floor. Flatline doesn’t pay it any mind, absorbed by his work, but it catches Wheeljack’s optic. The item in question is a sturdy metal case that he remembers having been pushed up against the back of the shelf when he’d walked in. 

He’s thinking that it’s a weird thing to have suddenly fallen over when Flatline steps back, sliding the instrument he’d been holding into his subspace. 

“Well,” he says, “From what I can tell, you’re in perfect shape--the healthiest dead mech I’ve ever laid optics on. Don’t suppose you’re ready to tell me what happened?”

“Would if I could, Doc.” Wheeljack shrugs apologetically. It’s obvious that Flatline thinks he’s lying, but that can’t be helped.

“We’re through here, then. I’d get out of here if I were you. I’m tempted to call the Badgeless on you for turning up here with _him_ ,” he gestures at Starscream, “half-dead. You’re lucky I don’t have the time to deal with the mess they’d make.” 

Wheeljack might not know exactly what the medic’s talking about, but he knows a threat when he hears one. He gets out, casting a last, lingering glance back at Starscream’s prone form. He would’ve liked to stay, but the reassurance of Starscream’s continued functioning isn’t worth whatever punishment Flatline might choose to inflict on him. 

A wave of fatigue washes over him as he makes his way back out to the street. His struts are wobbly and his processor hurts, and more than anything he just wants to lie down and rest for a while. 

That’s not an option, though, because it’s dawning on him that he has nowhere to _go_. He’d had quarters, sure, and friends who would have taken him in, but he has no way of knowing what’s happened to anything while he’s been out of the loop. And he’s really not in the mood for the whole charade of trying to explain how he’s alive when he has only the barest notion of that himself. 

To make matters worse, his surroundings are entirely unfamiliar. It doesn’t even seem like this is the same city, though he imagines it must be. Then again, who’s to say Starscream hadn’t transported him to a different locale entirely?

He drives, aimless, through the darkened streets. There aren’t many mechs about, given the hour, but the few who notice him nod cordially. 

Eventually, he begins to pass landmarks he remembers. With the familiarity, though, comes pervasive feeling of uneasiness. He no longer passes anyone, but he swears he can feel hostile optics digging into his plating. 

If he had to put a name to it, he thinks he’d say this part of the city feels… restless. It’s the same feeling he’d gotten from the Decepticon districts, before the war. It sets his dentae on edge. 

After a time, he finds himself standing outside of the building that had once housed his quarters. There are bars over the door and windows, now, and the walls are covered in faded graffiti. Wheeljack’s not entirely sure, but he thinks it might be painted with energon.

He moves on. It strikes him, suddenly, that his weapons are still offline.

He heads in the direction of his lab, though he doesn’t have the highest of hopes. For once, though, it seems that luck is on his side today: nobody’s tampered with his encryptions. As far as he can tell, everything is just as he left it. 

Wheeljack resets all of his alarms before sliding to the floor, nervous tension leaving his struts all at once and turning them to putty. It’s not the most comfortable he’s ever been, but it’s not like he’s never slept on the floor of his lab before. He can figure out something more permanent later. 

For now, he slips into a deep and dreamless recharge cycle.

\---

Wheeljack awakens to the shrill screech of a tripped alarm. He scrambles for something he might be able to use as a weapon, settling on a multi-pronged affair whose use he can’t quite call to mind at the moment. Once his optics focus, though, he realizes that the intruder is none other than a rather sheepish-looking Starscream.

“I’ve been out of it for a while, so you’ll have to forgive me if I’ve missed the news that breaking and entering is the proper way to pay someone a friendly visit these days.”

Starscream smiles wanly but doesn’t move, his gaze fixed on the large gun that, triggered by the alarms, is pointed directly at his face. Wheeljack gives the gun an affectionate pat and keys a deactivation code into its control panel. 

As the gun slides back into its recessed crevice, Starscream visibly relaxes. Wheeljack gives him a slow once-over, leaning back against a lab table. 

Starscream’s optics are repaired, and a great deal more lucid than they’d been before. The rest of his frame, though, still looks to be in pretty bad shape: he’s festooned with mesh patches, some of which have split to reveal the still-fresh wounds underneath. 

“Flatline cleared you for release, did he?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Y’know, I’ve heard that actually _listening_ to your doctor does wonders for the healing process.”

Rolling his optics, Starscream says, “As the ruler of Cybertron, I think I’m--”

Wheeljack raises his hands, leaning forward from the table. “Hold up, as the _what now_?”

Starscream cycles his optics. From the look on his face, Wheeljack guesses that his processor is racing as he searches for the words to explain himself. Probably, Wheeljack thinks, they’ll be a lie, but at least that’ll be _something_. 

“The people of Cybertron,” he says, oh-so-carefully, “came together and chose me as their leader.”

“Listen, Starscream; no offense and all that, but you’re telling me they picked _you_?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He doesn’t quite manage to sound genuinely affronted, though he comes close.

“I mean, what happened to everyone else? What happened to Metalhawk, and Bumblebee?”

Suddenly, Starscream becomes very interested in the lab’s ceiling. “Some things have happened while you were offline.”

“They’re dead, you mean.” Wheeljack says, flatly. It’s not a question. He knows too well the mannerisms of someone trying to euphemize an absent friend. 

“They died bravely, if it’s any consolation.” The gentle words fall awkwardly from Starscream’s glossa, like stones. It’s possible he’s telling the truth, that he means it, but a mouth accustomed to lying makes everything sound false after a while.

Anyway, what does it matter if they died _bravely_? The word ‘heroic’ is a shroud you put over rows of corpses to make yourself feel better about them. It doesn’t mean anything besides another weight on his spark.

“Did you… sleep here?” Starscream asks, breaking Wheeljack from his thoughts. If the look on the seeker’s face had been transposed to another mech, Wheeljack might have called it ‘concerned’.

“Yeah. Took me a while to find this place again. The city’s all changed around from what I remember.”

“That’d be Metroplex.” At Wheeljack’s confused expression, he elaborates: “Most of the city proper is Metroplex, the titan. Where we are, this is the outskirts-- what’s left of the old city.”

Really, nothing should surprise Wheeljack anymore. “Of course the city’s a titan,” he mumbles, rubbing at his optics. 

“You know, you can more or less claim some quarters for yourself out here. That’s what everyone does.”

Wheeljack thinks of the optics he had felt, of the unease that had traced icy fingers down his spinal strut. The panel indicating that his security systems are primed blinks reassuringly at him. 

“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll stay here.”

Starscream frowns. “If you’re worried about the legality of it, I’ll remind you that I _make_ the laws.”

“It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

“I dunno. I guess I can’t help feeling that nowhere’s entirely… safe. Maybe your paranoia’s rubbing off after all.”

“If safety’s your concern, you could always move in with me. Being the king does come with its… assurances, after all.”

Wheeljack stares at Starscream, trying to parse the seeker’s intent. He _looks_ sincere enough, but his field is pulled too close to his plating for Wheeljack to get any real sense of it. That might be more concerning if it weren’t Starscream, who, he’s pretty sure, hides everything as a matter of principle. Still, though, he has to ask: “Just to be clear, you’re not _propositioning_ me, right? Because I’ve gotta say, it’s been a rough couple of days and I’m not in the mood to deal with that.”

Starscream chuckles. “No, of course not. I’m just providing for my citizens. You’ve done me a few good turns, and now I’m returning the favor. Anyway, it’s only until you find something more suitable.”

There’s probably an ulterior motive. Pit, it’s Starscream-- there are probably at least _five_. But the other option is sleeping on the floor of his lab for the foreseeable future, and he’s growing more opposed to that idea by the second. 

Starscream’s had plenty of chances to hurt him, so it seems unlikely he’ll try anything now. For better or worse, it looks like the seeker’s developed an interest in him. 

“Why not?” He says, finally, with the air of someone admitting defeat.

Starscream claps his hands together, a broad grin spreading across his face. “Excellent! Just give me a few hours to get things sorted out, and I’ll swing back around to get you.”

Wheeljack watches the seeker flounce away, the spring in his step impressively unhindered by his recent wounds. A part of his processor insists that accepting had been a bad idea, but he pushes it aside. It’s not like this is a binding contract, after all. If things don’t work, he can always move back into his lab.

And maybe tighten up his defenses, he thinks, picking up a wrench.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no i did not forget that i blew up star's house a few chapters ago. don't worry, i'll get to that.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter feels more fast-paced than usual and i do not know why

When Starscream comes online, there’s a few moments of panic when he doesn’t know where he is. It isn’t a new experience, waking up in unfamiliar surroundings with no memory of how he got there, but it’s one he’d thought (hoped) he’d left behind with the war. As though any of them have really left the war behind.

Something moves in the corner of his vision and he flinches back, instinctively trying to online his weapon systems (it’ll be futile, they’ll have disabled those, they always do) but the figure turns out to be Flatline, holopad in hand and confusion in his optics as he processes the missiles trained on him. 

It comes back to him, then: the explosion, the shrapnel, Wheeljack. _Wheeljack_. He takes a quick inventory of the room, waning anxiety ratcheting up a few levels when he doesn’t find the mech anywhere. 

“Starscream?” Flatline says, holding out his hands in a placating gesture. “Starscream, can you hear me?” 

He hears the words twice, and for a moment, before he remembers Bumblebee, Starscream thinks he’s hearing double. Then he turns away from Flatline, finding himself almost face-to-face with the small yellow mech who’s leaning towards him from the side of the medical slab. 

“Of course,” Starscream says, in answer to both the queries. He watches as relief spreads across Bumblebee’s face, flattening the worried lines from it. His smile, when it comes, is like the sun: so brilliant that it almost hurts to look at. 

It’s then that Starscream realizes his hand feels… _strange_. It isn’t pain (enough of him hurts right now that it’s pretty easy to tell the difference), but rather a sort of odd tingly feeling. When he looks down, he finds Bumblebee’s smaller hand placed atop his own. ‘Through’ might be a better word-- the half-visible digits disappear into the plating of his hand at several points. 

Bumblebee, noticing his attentions, pulls his hand back with an embarrassed cough. He crosses his arms and, though he’s turned his face away, Starscream thinks his faceplates have a faint flush to them.

Starscream… doesn’t know what to make of that. Before he can think about it further, though, Flatline’s there, bustling about and asking questions that demand Starscream’s focus. There’s some drivel about “ruptured lines” and how he’s “lucky to be alive right now”, as if he's a newcomer to all this injury business.

He manages to endure this for a few more kliks before asking where Wheeljack is. Flatline trails off, fixing Starscream with an incredulous look. 

“Wheeljack? How should _I_ know?” 

“You mean you just let him wander off? He was _shot_!”

“He was shot a _year ago_! Whatever stopped him from dying back then-- and I’d bet good shanix that you’ve got something to do with that-- left him in perfect health. Which is more than I can say for the state _you_ were in.”

“You weren’t at all _curious_?”

“Curiosity gets medics killed, Starscream. I deal with injured mechs, and then when they aren’t injured any more I kick them out. Speaking of which,” he says, turning towards the door, “I need to get some more mesh patches. Try not to move around too much, won’t you? The sealant hasn’t quite dried everywhere.”

As the sound of Flatline’s steps fade away, Starscream’s already clambering off of the slab. A lance of pain shoots through him when he catches his wing on the side, but he ignores it. 

“Did you miss the bit where Flatline told you to stay put?”

“Nope,” Starscream says, skirting around Bumblebee so that he can peer out the door the medic has just vacated. 

“I see how you survived millions of years of war, what with all the ignoring medics about potentially fatal injuries.”

“This isn’t bad,” Starscream scoffs-- and it _isn’t_ , he’s had much worse, but Bumblebee’s looking at him with a pained expression that tells him he should have maybe lied about that. “Anyway, I need to find Wheeljack.” 

“Why does he matter so much to you?” Bumblebee asks. There’s something strange in his voice, but Starscream doesn’t have the time to think about it because he’s busy creeping into the hallway, double-checking that Flatline isn’t back yet as he makes his way towards the door.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Come _on_ , Starscream. I’m not an idiot. You prioritised checking up on him over escaping your own collapsing house. You apparently saved his life after Prowl almost killed him. And now you’re risking your health-- _again_ \-- to go looking for him. I just... want to know _why_.”

“He said he trusted me. Before everything. He wanted to give me a chance.” He thinks his voice goes a bit softer, there at the end. He doesn’t say, _I can’t remember the last time someone did that_ , but the words hover there, unspoken. 

“It sounds almost like you care about him,” Bumblebee says, and there’s that weird tone in his voice still. “I thought you didn’t care about anyone.”

Starscream cracks open the front door, making sure the alley’s deserted before he continues. “It’s not that I _care_ about him,” he says, ignoring the disbelieving sound Bumblebee makes, “It’s that someone who trusts me is a resource I can’t afford to waste.

“Windblade trusted you,” Bumblebee says. “Or at least, she was willing to. Didn’t stop you from trying to have her killed, and then antagonizing her when that didn’t work out.”

Starscream stops walking, turning around so fast that Bumblebee almost collides with him. “Listen,” he says, “I don’t need to explain myself to you. Maybe I just want _one person_ on this Primus-forsaken planet who doesn’t hate everything about me. Is that too much to ask for?” 

He hadn’t really meant to say that last bit, but as soon as it passes his lips he feels the truth of it. He’s tired, his whole frame hurts, and someone’s just tried to kill him. Suddenly, he very much wants to talk to someone who might, even in the loosest of terms, call him a friend. Primus, he’d practically settle for ‘not an enemy,’ at this point. 

He starts walking again. Bumblebee’s gone quiet, and even if he feels a little guilty about it Starscream’s grateful that the questions have stopped. 

Where to start looking, though? Where would Wheeljack have gone, set adrift in this city that’s only partially as he remembers it?

His lab seems like a safe enough bet. He happens to know (ensured) that nothing has happened to it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s on the other side of the city from here. Transforming is out of the question with the shape he’s in; he might be reckless, but he’s not in the mood for falling out of the sky. 

He resigns himself to a long, long walk. 

\---

“Starscream,” Bumblebee says as they exit Wheeljack’s lab, “When you were telling Wheeljack about how _safe_ your house is, I think you forgot to mention that you don’t currently have a house. Because your house got blown up. _Yesterday_.”

“I’ll set up better defenses this time,” Starscream says, rolling his optics.

“Don’t you think you should _tell_ Wheeljack that someone tried to kill you? Don’t you think that’s the kind of thing he deserves to know if he’s going to live with you?”

“I will. Eventually.”

“Right, yeah, because you’re the absolute _pinnacle_ of honesty.” There’s a beat of silence, and then: “You still don’t have a house.”

“I can _get_ one. Most of this city is empty. And being the ruler of Cybertron has to come with some perks besides the attempted murder.” 

That said, he comms rattrap:  
_> I need a house. Something already furnished. _  
_> ASAP_

He adds, almost as an afterthought: 

_> Preferably something with at least two rooms._

There’s a few kliks filled with nothing but Bumblebee staring archly at him, and then there’s a list spooling out before his optics, followed by a message. 

_> >Glad to see you aren’t dead, by the way. Had a lot of mechs worried._

Starscream’s willing to bet that Rattrap’s not among those mechs. Starscream doesn’t think he’s got the guts to try and kill him outright, but it wouldn’t surprise him to learn that the mech had played some role, no matter how indirectly. 

Now’s not the time to worry about potentially-treacherous subordinates though. He’s got a house to pretend to own. 

He ends up choosing the closest one, definitely for Wheeljack’s convenience and not at all because whatever painkillers Flatline had given him are beginning to wear off. 

Along the way he stops to grab some energon and a couple bottles of Engex, definitely because that’s the sort of thing people have in their home and not on the off chance that Wheeljack will want them. Either the rumors of his death have been greatly exaggerated or he looks worse than he thought (or both), because the shopkeep doesn’t even try to make him pay for anything, just waves him out of the shop with a fearful expression. 

His frame’s beginning to hurt in earnest when he makes it to the quarters he’s picked. The door is unlocked, a small piece of luck. Starscream enters, flicking on the lights. 

It’s not bad, as places go. There _are_ two rooms, as per his request, as well as a set of washracks and a kitchen-y sort of area. Besides that, there’s a table and not much else. 

He never really had much in the way of belongings anyway, though. What little he’d once owned had been lost over the course of the war, and he hasn’t found the time or motivation to collect anything new. It’s a little jarring to realize that all he’d really lost in the explosion is a handful of datapads.

Shaking his head to clear it, he sets the bottles of engex down on the table along with the energon. It crosses his mind that he’s created an image of himself as someone who lives in an undecorated house containing nothing of note except engex, but it’s a bit late to worry about that now. And, after all, that’s the way he’s been living for months now-- if anything, there’s _less_ engex here.

He opens the door to one of the berthrooms. It’s as sterile and unadorned as everything else, but at least there _is_ a berth. Starscream settles himself on the edge of it with a heavy ex-vent.

It doesn’t seem like Bumblebee’s around at the moment (he’s probably still moping about… whatever had upset him earlier), everything is more or less in order, and he’s not due to meet Wheeljack for at least another hour. 

He sets an alarm, arranges himself more comfortably on the berth, and falls quickly into recharge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. starscream, king of interpersonal relationships  
> 2\. this may or may not get love-triangely for a bit but i swear to god that it doesn't end up that way


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been kinda a while, life's been kickin' my ass lately. And, unfortunately, is probably going to keep doing so for at least another month or so. I don't have any intention of abandoning this fic, though, so no worries there.

Wheeljack’s trying to work, he really is. His processor, though, seems like it’s got other plans. He gets lost in equations that should be second nature, the numbers blurring together in front of his optics like so much nonsense. By the third time a beaker spills under his wavering hands, he decides to call it a day. 

It’s the newfound strangeness of the planet that tears at him, sinking sharp claws into his internals. Metroplex, the living city. Starscream, his helm adorned with a crown. His friends, apparently either dead or beyond his reach. It feels like the ground has been pulled out from under him, like the energon in his lines has turned to ice. 

And that’s assuming that what Starscream’s told him is true. Clearly things have changed; anyone with optics can see that. But as to the extent and nature of the change, he has only Starscream’s words to lean on. And what gauzy things those words are, immaterial and sleek as an oiled turbofox.

A single thought swirls around the overfull basin of his mind, again and again: _I thought this was supposed to be over_. How naive. 

His worries are interrupted by the soft chime of an incoming message. He doesn’t have to open it to know that it will be from Starscream, despite the fact that he doesn’t recall ever having given the seeker his comm. frequency. On the scale of personal invasions he’s suffered today, though, that hardly rates a mention. 

When he opens the message, all it contains is a set of coordinates. Wheeljack waits a moment, thinking that something more might be forthcoming, but that appears to be the whole of it.  
That’s… pretty ominous, actually. Historically speaking, a mech that blindly followed mysterious coordinates was liable to get himself offlined. 

It _is_ Starscream, though, and if Wheeljack’s going to live with him he expects he’ll have to get used to inclarity and subterfuge. The thought almost makes him want to say “Frag it” and resign himself to living in his lab after all. 

But he _had_ promised to try. With a heavy ex-vent, he gathers up a couple tools and datapads that he thinks he might find a use for and subspaces them. On a whim, he also grabs a handful of the mesh he uses to patch himself up whenever an experiment goes particularly awry. He’s sure Starscream hasn’t gone back to a medic, and equally sure that the seeker’s home will be devoid of medical supplies.

Then he sets all of his alarms, closing the door carefully behind him. 

The coordinates aren’t far, so he figures he’ll walk. He’d known this city like the the back of his hand, once, and he’d been in the process of re-learning it when he’d been so rudely offlined. He supposes he’ll just have to adjust once again, the sooner the better. 

He’s barely escaped the shadow of his lab when he feels the optics again. It’s less worrying than before; he’s got his weapons online, now, and he’ll be damned before he lives the rest of his life in fear of some enemy too cowardly to even show himself. He’s had enough of running, thank you very much. 

He makes it a few blocks without any trouble. Sometimes, as he turns a corner, he’s hit with the distinct feeling that someone-- something?-- had been lingering there, and had only just managed to duck out of view. It doesn’t concern him too much. He’s lived long enough in the shadow of danger to know what it tastes like, and this isn’t it. 

So he startles only briefly when a hand darts out of the darkness and catches hold of his wrist. He doesn’t recognize the mech; the scratched-off symbol on his chest means that he’d been a part of the war, but there’s no way of knowing which side. Not that it matters, these days. Not that it had ever mattered as much as some mechs liked to think. 

“Now, what’s a pretty bot like you doing in a place like this?” The mech rasps. His grimy fingers trace exploratory paths across Wheeljack’s pristine plating. His armor is cleaner than he’s ever kept it himself, and it occurs to him that he’s not just a novelty here, but something of a commodity as well. It’s not a good feeling.

“I’d move that hand if I were you.”

“Oh? And why’s that?” The mech’s smile is positively lecherous, his fingers creeping steadily up Wheeljack’s arm.

There’s a cache of grenades in his subspace, and it’s taking most of his willpower to resist pulling one out and shoving it between the mech’s chipped dentae. It’s difficult to remember that this isn’t an offense that warrants death, when the war had set the bar so low. The wrong look, the wrong frame, the wrong badge: all of them had become death sentences. 

This encounter doesn’t have to end that way, though. The rules of the future are being written now, and all of them have a part to play. Wheeljack’s not stupid, he knows that any individual event won’t change anything, but it all adds up. Hopefully to something better.

So, in a single, lithe movement, he twists his arm so that his fingers are clenched tight around the mech’s wrist, his arm braced against Wheeljack’s shoulder, and _pulls_ with all the strength he can muster. 

Surprise barely has time to register on the mech’s features before he’s flipped through the air, his back crashing into the ground with a nasty-sounding crunch. He thrashes about, but Wheeljack’s got him pinned firmly and after a moment he resigns himself to stillness. Wheeljack looks down at him and thinks that he’s already gone this far; he might as well see if he can get some answers out of the whole mess. 

“While we’re here,” Wheeljack says, conversationally, “I’d like to ask you a question.”

The mech growls, low in his throat. Wheeljack twists the arm he’s got a grip on until he can feel the tension of interior cables strained to their limits. 

“Glad to hear we’re in agreement,” he says. “Now, what do you know about Starscream?”

“Starscream?” The mech cycles his optics, confusion crumpling his features. “Last I heard, the fragger was dead. Got blown up or some slag. Good riddance, if you ask me.”

Wheeljack leans back, scrubbing a hand across his faceplate. An explosion would explain the injuries, but it opens up a whole new array of questions. What in the pit has Starscream gotten himself (and, by association, Wheeljack) into?

Wheeljack release his hold and the mech scrambles to his feet, optics blown wide, hand held to a rather noticeable dent in his side. 

“What the frag, man,” he warbles, taking a staggering half-step forward. He stops when he notices the grenade that Wheeljack has produced and is now idly tossing from one hand to the other. “Okay, okay! I’m leaving. Primus.”

And leave he does, with a stumbling gait and a dozen backward glances. It’s an act, Wheeljack observes wryly. If a half-sparked toss and a few wrenched cables could offline a mech, the battles would have been a great deal shorter.

As he puts the grenade away and continues on, he notices a shift in atmosphere. He still feels that he’s being watched, but it’s with something approaching appreciative wariness rather than the restless hunger of before. He supposes that’s an improvement.

The coordinates take him to a rather average-looking place, all told. It’s not small, or even particularly run-down, compared to everything else, but Wheeljack had expected Starscream to situate himself in the most opulent quarters he could get his hands on. It contrasts starkly with the vanity he’s grown accustomed to. 

The door, when he reaches it, is unlocked; another tally in the growing column of uneasiness that settles, familiar, in his struts. There’s no reply to his knocking, or his hesitant entreaties. So, despite the protest of his survival instincts, he pushes the door open and steps inside. 

The interior is just as jarring and unimpressive, if not more so. There’s some sparse furnishings, some engex, and some energon. And that’s… it. He had expected some testament to Starscream’s victory, Megatron’s failure, (one and the same, he thinks), but there’s nothing of the sort. 

Also conspicuously absent: Starscream himself. He tries the seeker’s name again, only to be met with silence. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a _little_ worried, at this point. Starscream had been so _enthusiastic_ that he’s finding it hard to believe that the seeker isn’t even bothering to greet him. 

And if Starscream isn’t absent by choice, that opens up a whole new realm of unfortunate possibilities. That his wounds have caught up with him, for one; or that whatever inflicted them has returned to finish the job. 

There are only three doors, as far as he can tell, though he wouldn’t put it past Starscream to have a secret entrance hidden away somewhere. One looks to be the washracks; the others, he presumes, lead to berthrooms. It’s that or Starscream’s decided they’re going to live in the same room, and Wheeljack doesn’t think he’s deluded enough to make that suggestion.

The first door reveals an empty room, just as eerily pristine as everything else. There’s a berth, untouched, and a simple desk. Wheeljack slides the door shut, suspicion displacing some of the uneasiness. None of this furniture looks like something Starscream would choose, and the fact that he just so _happens_ to inhabit quarters with exactly one spare room, which he has apparently never put to any other use, is too convenient for his tastes. 

The second door nets a result, though Wheeljack wouldn’t really call it a _better_ one. Starscream’s sprawled out on the floor, limbs askew, wings bent at an angle that must be painful. He doesn’t react when Wheeljack enters, which sets off all sorts of alarms in his processor. Even as he crosses the room in a handful of long strides, he’s anticipating worst-case scenarios, devising contingency plans. 

But he needn’t have worried (or at least, not as _much_ ), because as soon as he rests an exploratory hand against Starscream’s plating, the seeker’s optics fly open. There’s a flash of fear in them, and a lance of _something_ sparking sharply through the seeker’s field, and then a lazy grin drapes itself over his features. If Wheeljack hadn’t caught that moment of panic, he wouldn’t know anything was wrong. As it is, he can see the sharp edges poking through the veneer of Starscream’s gauzy smile. 

“Come here often?” He asks, nonchalant, as though he isn’t twisted up like a pile of broken energon candies on the floor of his too-clean house. 

Wheejack sits down heavily, definitely because he’s tired of standing and not because his knees are weak with something he refuses to call relief. 

“Thought you were gonna come get me,” Wheeljack says, “Or do you make a habit of lying to all your guests?”

“Plans change,” he says, airily. Apparently he’s still pretending he has a handle on all this. 

Wheeljack doesn't dignify that with a response, rolling his optics skyward. Primus, give him the strength to deal with this. 

“Don’t you think,” he says, “That you should get up off the floor?” 

“Maybe I don’t want to,” he says, petulant. 

“Humor me, then.”

With a theatrical sigh, Starscream gathers his limbs under him. He pushes himself up, halfway, held for a frozen moment with his struts stretched at crisp, linear angles. A small shiver runs through him, like cracks in a sheet of ice. Then his arms collapse, sending his frame crashing harshly against the floor once again. A trickle of energon oozes its way down his wing. 

“Do not,” he grits out, “say anything.” 

He’s looking at the floor, equal parts irritated and pained, and so he doesn’t notice when Wheeljack stands. He does, however, notice the hands that brace themselves firmly against his sides and lift him up onto the berth. He’s sputtering something about dignity, as if someone who’s probably spent several hours lying on the floor has any claim to that.

“You just looked real pathetic down there, is all. What if someone had come looking for their illustrious leader?”

Starscream scoffs. “Nobody would come here--” he cuts himself off, optics widening as he registers what he’s said. 

Wheeljack hums. “No, they wouldn’t. Nobody knows you’re here, do they?”

“What are you--”

“This isn’t your house, Starscream. Or it hasn’t been until very recently.”

“If you’ve come here to _accuse--_ ”

“I’m not accusin’ anyone. This place is too spotless and bland for any mech to live here, let alone someone with your...tastes.” Here he stops for a minute to run his optics, pointedly, up and down Starscream’s brightly painted frame. “Couple that with the fact that the rumor mill tells me you’ve been blown up lately, and a mech has to wonder what’s really going on.”

Starscream stares at him for a long moment before letting out a heavy ex-vent and falling back against the berth. He flinches when his wings come into contact with the surface. “It usually takes people a bit longer to figure out that I’m lying.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t one of Cybertron’s top scientists for nothing. And I have the benefit of knowing that you’re usually not telling the truth to begin with.”

“I suppose I’ve earned your suspicion,” Starscream says, a tired half-smile tugging at his lips. It vanishes a moment later, only to be replaced by a pained grimace. 

“Let me guess,” Wheeljack says, crossing his arms. “Painkillers wear off?”

“It’s fine. I’ve dealt with worse than this.” His optics are screwed tightly shut, though, and hints of static cloud his voice. 

“I’m sure you are. That’s why you were all jumbled up on the floor when I got here.”  
Starscream onlines one optic to glare up at him. Wheeljack contemplates walking back out the door-- he hadn’t, after all, signed up for this. But if he leaves, there’s a pretty good chance Starscream’s going to do something stupid that injures him even further, and he really doesn’t want the weight of the seeker’s _actual_ (rather than rumored) death on his conscience.

With a long-suffering ex-vent, Wheeljack settles himself gingerly on the berth beside Starscream. Pulling out the mesh patches he’d thought to bring from his lab, he says, “Come here.”

“I don’t want your pity,” he says, turning his helm towards the wall so that he doesn’t have to look at Wheeljack. 

“This isn’t pity, you stubborn aft. I’m tryin’ to help you, since I’m sure you aren’t planning on going back to a medic.”

“Don’t need to,” he mumbles, but he sits up and moves marginally closer. 

Wheeljack sets himself to the task of changing out the mesh and cleaning the wounds. He isn’t a medic by any stretch of the imagination, but there were things a mech picked up when a war went on for long enough with qualified medics spread too thin. He has an inkling that Starscream knows how to do this, too, but that he’s either been in too much pain to manage it or hasn’t deemed it worth the effort. With what Starscream’s been saying, he has a creeping suspicion that it’s the latter. 

Starscream’s optics have gone hazy by the time he’s finished, and he hardly seems to remember that Wheeljack is in the room at all. Wheeljack wonders, not for the first time, how much he’s really hurting, if he even realizes it himself. There wasn’t a mech alive who hadn’t seen and felt his fair share of suffering, but he’s heard things that make him think that Starscream’s had more than most.

He thinks that he should really see about getting some more painkillers, or badgering Starscream into doing it. How hard can that be, when you rule a planet?

Finished with his ministrations, Wheeljack sits back. Starscream still doesn’t react, and after a few moments of silence, broken only by the small hitches of the seeker’s vents that Wheeljack studiously ignores, he gets up.

He flicks off the lights and is about to shut the door when there’s a soft rustling sound from the direction of the berth.

“Wheeljack?” Starscream says, in a voice that’s almost too quiet to make out. When Wheeljack turns, Starscream’s optics are two points of red light in the near-darkness. 

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.” 

“Of course,” Wheeljack says, feeling a small smile stretch his lips beneath his faceplate. “What else are friends for?”

“What else,” Starscream echoes, sounding suddenly very small and far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like ive Maybe shoved tfp and idw wheeljack's personalities together a bit here  
> oops


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys. been a damn while, huh? i won't go into everything, but i've been in and out of hospitals, struggling with college, just kinda struggling to get by in general. but i really and truly do want to finish this, however long it takes.
> 
> so thank you, to everyone reading and leaving comments and kudos. it's because of you that i'm still writing this.

_“Maybe I just want one person on this Primus-forsaken planet who doesn’t hate everything about me. Is that too much to ask for?”_

Bumblebee remembers the way Starscream’s features had twisted as he spoke. He hadn’t said, _“I don’t hate you.”_ He doesn’t know if that would’ve made things better or worse, only that the words had piled up in his intake, choking him in their haste to escape.

He _should_ hate Starscream. Beyond the fact that they’d been on opposing sides of the war, Bumblebee knows that he’s not a _good_ mech. He’s been forced to bear witness to all the seeker’s bouts of petty viciousness, to his schemes, to his deceptions.

And yet that knowledge does nothing to stop his noncorporeal spark from fluttering painfully in its casing when Starscream grants him one of those rare smiles, when he laughs, when his plating catches the light just so. 

And it _certainly_ does nothing to stop the bitter, virulent feeling that spreads, like rust, through his internals until it feels like he’s choking on it. Because Starscream, despite all of his paranoid tendencies, has decided to trust _Wheeljack_. Trust him enough to invite him into his very home, enough to leave the door unlocked. 

Not that Wheeljack’s a bad mech. They’d been friends, once. That was before Wheeljack had gotten himself shot, and Bumblebee had gotten himself killed, and, well, that kind of thing really puts a strain on casual friendships. 

He watches Wheeljack flick on the lights, the next morning, watches the way he positions himself on the edge of the berth, careful that none of his frame comes in contact with Starscream’s because he remembers how that had gone, the last time. Bumblebee settles himself on Starscream’s opposite side, but it isn’t quite the same, the sentiment of _not touching_ , when you don’t have a choice in the matter.

For a while, Wheeljack just… looks at Starscream. The sliver of his face that’s visible is pensive, giving nothing away. Starscream would hate this, Bumblebee thinks, being observed so clinically without any of his defenses in place. Or maybe not-- it seems like he doesn’t know the seeker as well as he’d thought. 

Eventually Starscream’s optics flicker to life, perhaps roused by the subtle noises of Wheeljack’s inner mechanisms. He startles at their proximity, his gaze darting between the two of them in a way that has Wheeljack raising an optic ridge in confusion. It must, after all, look like Starscream’s staring at empty space. 

Eventually the seeker’s optics settle on Wheeljack. Bumblebee tries not to feel slighted, but he doesn’t quite manage. 

“What’re you doing here?” He asks, his voice sleep-soft and staticky. Wheeljack’s optics soften, and Bumblebee tries not to resent that either. 

“Hey, you’re the one that asked me to live here. Or have you forgotten already?”

“Smart-aft,” Starscream mumbles. He tries to sit up, deciding better of it when the movement triggers an involuntary hiss of pain. 

“Still hurts?” Wheeljack’s tone is acerbic, but there are undertones of concern in it as well.

“Obviously.”

“Why don’t you call Flatline, see if he’ll give you some more painkillers?”

“I’m not in the mood to listen to him complain,” Starscream says, stretching so that his limbs sprawl across the berth. One arm ends up draped over Wheeljack’s thigh, and Bumblebee has to scramble out of the way to avoid a leg. Wheeljack raises an optic ridge, but he doesn’t push Starscream away. 

“Does he often complain?”

“Only when I do something he doesn’t approve of.”

“So, all the time then?” 

“There’s no need to be _rude_ ,” Starscream grumbles, the pointed tips of his fingers digging slightly into Wheeljack’s plating. 

“Because you’re _never_ rude,” Wheeljack says. “Just call him. The longer you wait, the more time you give him to think about whatever you did.” 

Starscream ex-vents loudly and offlines his optics in a show of petulance that Bumblebee’s seen countless times before. That’ll be the end of that, he thinks. Except that it isn’t. 

After another moment of Starscream pointedly ignoring him, Wheeljack gingerly picks up Starscream’s hand. One of Starscream’s optics opens, just a crack, as Wheeljack begins to rub small circles into his palm. 

“What are you doing?” 

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Wheeljack’s fingers press against the finely-scarred metal plates, delving occasionally into the seams. Starscream shivers.

“It _looks_ like you’re trying to bribe me into doing what you want.” 

“Is it working?”

Starscream mumbles something that is neither confirmation nor denial, but Bumblebee can see the way the seeker’s whole frame leans, perhaps unconsciously, towards the point of contact. 

Bumblebee reminds himself that this is what he wants. He can’t look after Starscream in any meaningful way, insists to himself that he wouldn’t want that responsibility anyway. It’s better that Wheeljack is here. 

Maybe, he thinks, this is what he’s been waiting for. Maybe the universe had allocated Starscream some sort of guardian angel, in the form of an unwilling dead autobot, until someone else could take over. 

The moment he thinks it, he feels ridiculous -- what sort of deity would decide that _Starscream_ was the mech that needed protection? And such useless and ephemeral protection as a ghost could provide, at that. 

In the end, though, all he has is a processor full of suppositions, which is really not at all the same as having a friend. As he watches Starscream and Wheeljack bicker, loneliness settles over his frame like a deep fog, cold and clinging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kinda short, but i'm just trying to get back into things


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey what's up, my name's ray and i don't update for 8 months, and then twice in 24 hours.
> 
> also, my apologies if the writing style has changed: it has, after all, been a super long time.

Eventually, Wheeljack badgers Starscream into calling Flatline. Starscream gripes and whines, but he goes along with it in the end. Wheeljack supposes you don’t revive someone from the dead without caring about them at least a little bit, and if he has to exploit that to get Starscream to take care of himself, he’s damn well going to. 

While the seeker’s arguing with his medic (and Flatline has every reason to argue, given that his patient had just _wandered off the medical slab, really, who does that?_ ) Wheeljack wanders into the kitchen, such as it is. 

He pours himself some energon and, after a moment, settles down cross-legged on the floor. There’s been altogether too much time spent on the floor lately, he thinks. Had they lost all the chairs in the war, too? 

His thoughts spin out around him like a skein of stars, each a bright point of light that demands his attention. No matter how he turns them, the puzzle pieces don’t fit together quite right. It all comes back to Starscream. He’s sure the mech knows far more than he’s been willing to divulge, if only Wheeljack can figure out how to pry it out of him. 

Starscream saunters out of his berthroom after a while. Or, rather, he saunters as best he can with his myriad injuries. Despite the slight limp, it’s still pretty impressive -- most mechs would have been hard-pressed to scrape themselves off the floor. Wheeljack doesn’t let himself think too hard about the years of experience that it must have taken to produce such a carefully-cultivated swagger. 

“Hey,” Wheeljack says from the floor. He half-smiles as Starscream pivots sharply, nearly losing his balance as he re-orients himself. 

“What are you doing down there?” If Wheeljack had any shanix left, he’d bet it all that there was a slight flush tinting the seeker’s faceplates. 

“If you haven’t noticed, your house didn’t come with any chairs.”

“Oh.”

There’s a beat of silence as Wheeljack wonders if Starscream’s old house had contained chairs, either. He thinks that maybe you don’t need chairs if you don’t have any friends to occupy them, and feels immediately guilty at the assumption. Probably Starscream has loads of friends. Or whatever term uppity afts used to refer to their friends when they wanted to pretend that they were too good for friendship. ‘Associates’, maybe?

But then, where have all those friends been these past days? As far as Wheeljack can tell, the only person Starscream’s been talking to is Flatline, and then only reluctantly. And Wheeljack. Wheeljack, who Starscream had rescued, for some opaque and unknowable reason, from the brink of death. 

It feels almost like a puzzle piece taking shape. 

“So,” Wheeljack says, forcing himself to cut into the silence. “I’m sure you have loads of leader-type stuff to do.”

Starscream purses his lips. “You know, everyone still thinks I’m dead. Maybe I’ll stay dead for another day or two.”

Wheeljack stares at him. “Isn’t that a bit irresponsible?” 

“I think returning to the public eye in this state is a bit more irresponsible, seeing as how that’s likely to get me offlined by whoever tried this,” he gestures at his bandaged frame, “in the first place. I can’t even fly, for frag’s sake.” 

It’s… a fair point, actually. 

And he should leave well enough alone, he really should. Starscream’s business isn’t his problem. But all the good sense in the world doesn’t stop him from saying, in a voice more confident than he feels, “Well, then. What are we doing today, dead mech?”

\--

They end up in Wheeljack’s lab. Wheeljack expects Starscream to be disappointed with this, but he doesn’t seem to be. Instead, he’s poking around at all the half-finished experiments that litter every horizontal surface, occasionally asking questions about the purpose of one mechanism or another. 

Wheeljack can’t fathom what purpose the questions serve. Nothing he’s working on here is anything particularly crucial or secretive; none of it will give Starscream the upper hand in whatever personal wars he’s decided to wage these days.

“Starscream.” The mech in question looks up from where he’s been inspecting some dissembled heat-dispersion coils, his helm parallel with the counter top. 

“Hm?” 

“What are you doing here?”

“I seem to recall you inviting me. Implicitly. You didn’t stop me from following you.” 

“Surely you have other things to do. Places to go, people to see?” 

Starscream huffs, straightening up so that he can cross his arms in a petulant manner. “I’m sure you remember how people weren’t exactly lining up to trust me, before you got shot? How much do you suppose that’s changed?”

Not much, apparently. So he’d been right -- Starscream _doesn’t_ have anyone else. Somehow, that makes Wheeljack feel both sad and used, like a made-to-order companion. Maybe the seeker’s purposes were no more insidious than they appeared: Wheeljack had been the first mech in ages to express something other than outright animosity towards him, and he couldn’t bear to lose that. 

“You have to trust other people, if you want ‘em to trust you.” 

Starscream starts. “You sound like--” He cuts himself off, biting his lip. 

“Like who?” The seeker looks… nervous. Now, what could that be about?

“Like someone else I know.” Starscream finishes lamely. He turns his back to Wheeljack, picking up a sheet of metal and holding it up to the light. A blurry facsimile of his face is reflected in its polished surface, but the image isn’t clear enough for Wheeljack to make out his expression. 

“Did you know that I almost became a scientist?” 

Wheeljack cycles his optics. He hadn’t known that. It’s clear that Starscream is trying to distract him from whatever information he had almost let slip, but it’s such a tantalizing piece of bait-- how can he help but bite? 

“What happened?”

Starscream shrugs, the nonchalance of the motion belied by the tension in his struts. “Nobody needed a flyer to be a scientist.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Megatron’s whole thing based on escaping functionism?”

Wheeljack notes, but graciously doesn’t comment on, the full-frame flinch that accompanies Megatron’s name. 

“Ostensibly, yes. But early on, Megatron didn’t need scientists. He needed diplomats, and soldiers. And I wanted very much to _be_ what he needed.” 

Wasn’t that what they had all wanted? To live up to their leaders’ expectations, to believe that the cause they were fighting for was the right one?

“The war’s over now, Starscream. You’re free to do whatever you want.” And wasn’t that frightening, this freedom, so vast that it could crush you as easy as breathing?

Starscream’s shoulders hitch in something that’s probably meant to be a laugh, but mostly just looks painful. “Cybertron doesn’t need me to be a scientist now any more than Megatron needed me to be one all those millennia ago.” 

Very softly, Wheeljack says, “Cybertron didn’t need you to bring me back. But you still did it.”

He wants Starscream to say, _I needed you_. He doesn’t want Starscream to say it. He doesn’t know what it will mean if Starscream says it. 

“Cybertron might still need you,” Starscream says. And it’s a coward’s answer, but it’s an expected one. The conversation shifts back into the realm of the familiar. 

“I suppose it might. I’ve done some pretty impressive things.” 

Starscream scoffs. “Call me when you’re running an entire planet. Then we can talk about ‘impressive’.”

Behind his face-plate, Wheeljack smiles. 

“Well,” he says, more gently than he really means to, “how about this: you might not be a scientist, but would you like me to tell you about some of the things I’ve been working on?”

Starscream puts down the sheet of metal. He turns around. He cycles his optics. “Why?”

Wheeljack shrugs. “Why not? It seems like something you might enjoy.”

Starscream’s smile is hesitant, but it’s as sincere as anything Wheeljack’s ever seen. 

And it’s so easy. As easy as breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i never meant this to be, like, a commentary on War. but i guess every post-war TF story kind of is, especially if it's gonna be set on post-war cybertron


End file.
